Women Icons of Popular Music 2 volumes : The Rebels, Rockers, and Renegades (Greenwood Icons)

WOMEN ICONS OF POPULAR MUSIC Recent Titles in Greenwood Icons Icons of Business: An Encyclopedia of Mavericks, Movers...

Author: Carrie Havranek

36 downloads 964 Views 8MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!

Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

WOMEN ICONS OF POPULAR MUSIC

Recent Titles in Greenwood Icons Icons of Business: An Encyclopedia of Mavericks, Movers, and Shakers Edited by Kateri Drexler Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music, and Culture Edited by Mickey Hess Icons of Evolution: An Encyclopedia of People, Evidence, and Controversies Edited by Brian Regal Icons of Rock: An Encyclopedia of the Legends Who Changed Music Forever Scott Schinder and Andy Schwartz Icons of R&B and Soul: An Encyclopedia of the Artists Who Revolutionized Rhythm Bob Gulla African American Icons of Sport: Triumph, Courage, and Excellence Matthew C. Whitaker Icons of the American West: From Cowgirls to Silicon Valley Edited by Gordon Morris Bakken Icons of Latino America: Latino Contributions to American Culture Roger Bruns Icons of Crime Fighting: Relentless Pursuers of Justice Edited by Jeffrey Bumgarner Icons of Unbelief: Atheists, Agnostics, and Secularists Edited by S.T. Joshi

WOMEN ICONS OF POPULAR MUSIC The Rebels, Rockers, and Renegades

Carrie Havranek

Greenwood Icons

GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut

•

London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Havranek, Carrie, 1974– Women icons of popular music : the rebels, rockers, and renegades / Carrie Havranek. v. cm. — (Greenwood icons) Includes bibliographicval references, discographies, and index. Contents: Vol. 1. Tori Amos; Joan Baez; Mary J. Blige; Patsy Cline; Ani DiFranco; Missy Elliott; Aretha Franklin; Emmylou Harris; Debbie Harry; Chrissie Hynde; The Indigo Girls; Janis Joplin — Vol. 2. Carole King; Madonna; Sarah McLachlan; Joni Mitchell; Dolly Parton; Liz Phair; Bonnie Raitt; Linda Ronstadt; Diana Ross; Patti Smith; Tina Turner; Suzanne Vega. ISBN 978-0-313-34083-3 ((set) : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-34084-0 ((vol. 1) : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-34085-7 ((vol. 2) : alk. paper) 1. Women singers. 2. Women rock musicians. I. Title. ML82.H39 2009 782.42164092′273—dc22 [B] 2008027475 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2009 by Carrie Havranek All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2008027475 ISBN: 978–0–313–34083–3 (set) 978–0–313–34084–0 (Volume 1) 978–0–313–34085–7 (Volume 2) First published in 2009 Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.greenwood.com Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents List of Photos

vii

Series Foreword

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

Introduction

xiii

Timeline

xix

Tori Amos

1

Joan Baez

23

Mary J. Blige

45

Patsy Cline

65

Ani DiFranco

85

Missy Elliott

105

Aretha Franklin

121

Emmylou Harris

141

Debbie Harry

161

Chrissie Hynde

179

Indigo Girls

195

Janis Joplin

213

vi

Contents

Carole King

233

Madonna

253

Sarah McLachlan

273

Joni Mitchell

293

Dolly Parton

315

Liz Phair

335

Bonnie Raitt

353

Linda Ronstadt

375

Diana Ross

397

Patti Smith

419

Tina Turner

439

Suzanne Vega

459

Select Bibliography

479

Index

483

List of Photos Tori Amos (page 1) performs on Last Call with Carson Daly (NBC), 2005. Courtesy of Photofest. Joan Baez (page 23). Courtesy of Photofest. Mary Blige (page 45) performs at NBC’s Radio Awards, 2005. Courtesy of Photofest. Patsy Cline (page 65), circa 1950s. Courtesy of Photofest. Ani DiFranco (page 85) poses for a portrait at her home in New Orleans, Dec. 30, 2003. AP/Wide World Photos. Missy Elliott (page 105), circa early 2001. Courtesy of Photofest. Aretha Franklin (page 121) plays and sings during a recording session for Columbia Records in New York, 1961. Frank Driggs Collection/Getty Images. Emmylou Harris (page 141) performs on Good Morning America (ABC) on June 28, 2002. Courtesy of Photofest. Debbie Harry (page 161), circa 1970s. Courtesy of Photofest. Chrissie Hynde (page 179) of the Pretenders. Courtesy of Sire/Photofest. Indigo Girls Amy Ray and Emily Saliers (page 195), 2004. Courtesy of Photofest. Janis Joplin (page 213), circa 1969. Courtesy of Photofest. Carole King (page 233), during the 1970s. Courtesy of Photofest. Madonna (page 253) performs at New York’s Madison Square Garden during her Reinvention Tour, 2004. AP/Wide World Photos. Sarah McLachlan (page 273) performs in her hometown of Halifax on Wednesday, June 1, 2005. AP/Wide World Photos.

viii

List of Photos

Joni Mitchell (page 293), outside The Revolution Club in London, 1968. © Central Press/Getty Images. Dolly Parton (page 315), circa 1990s. Courtesy of Photofest. Liz Phair (page 335) lays down some guitar licks, 1994. © Tom Maday/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images. Bonnie Raitt (page 353), 1995. Courtesy of Photofest. Linda Ronstadt (page 375), circa mid-1970s. Courtesy of Photofest. Diana Ross (page 397) performs in the rain at New York City’s Central Park, 1983. AP/Wide World Photos. Patti Smith (page 419), as photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe, circa 1975, for her album Horses. Courtesy of Photofest. Tina Turner (page 439) launches her Break Every Rule tour in Munich, Germany, in 1987. AP/Wide World Photos. Suzanne Vega (page 459) performs at the Palace of Arts in Budapest, Hungary, 2006. AP/Wide World Photos.

Series Foreword Worshipped and cursed. Loved and loathed. Obsessed about the world over. What does it take to become an icon? Regardless of subject, culture, or era, the requisite qualiﬁcations are the same: (1) challenge the status quo, (2) inﬂuence millions, and (3) impact history. Using these criteria, Greenwood Press introduces a new reference format and approach to popular culture. Spanning a wide range of subjects, volumes in the Greenwood Icons series provide students and general readers a port of entry into the most fascinating and inﬂuential topics of the day. Every title offers an in-depth look at approximately twenty-four iconic ﬁgures, each of which captures the essence of a broad subject. These icons typically embody a group of values, elicit strong reactions, reﬂect the essence of a particular time and place, and link different traditions and periods. Among those featured are artists and activists, superheroes and spies, inventors and athletes, the legends and mythmakers of entire generations. Yet icons can also come from unexpected places: as the heroine who transcends the pages of a novel or as the revolutionary idea that shatters our previously held beliefs. Whether people, places, or things, such icons serve as a bridge between the past and the present, the canonical and the contemporary. By focusing on icons central to popular culture, this series encourages students to appreciate cultural diversity and critically analyze issues of enduring signiﬁcance. Most important, these books are as entertaining as they are provocative. Is Disneyland a more inﬂuential icon of the American West than Las Vegas? How do ghosts and ghouls reﬂect our collective psyche? Is Barry Bonds an inspiring or deplorable icon of baseball? Designed to foster debate, the series serves as a unique resource that is ideal for paper writing or report purposes. Insightful, in-depth entries provide far more information than conventional reference articles but are less intimidating and more accessible than a book-length biography. The most revered and reviled icons of American and world history are brought to life with related

x

Series Foreword

sidebars, timelines, fact boxes, and quotations. Authoritative entries are accompanied by bibliographies, making these titles an ideal starting point for further research. Spanning a wide range of popular topics, including business, literature, civil rights, politics, music, and more, books in the series provide fresh insights for the student and popular reader into the power and inﬂuence of icons, a topic of as vital interest today as in any previous era.

Acknowledgments This project would not have been possible without the literal, spiritual, and metaphorical help of many people. First and immediately, I need to thank my editors at Greenwood, Lindsay Claire and Kristi Ward, for whom no question was too small and for their editorial guidance and sharp insights. Fellow Greenwood author Chris Smith deserves thanks for recommending me for this project. An extension of gratitude goes to Christine Marra, whose keen eye and close attention to detail polished this manuscript to a spit-shine through its ﬁnal stages. Alexis Walker assisted early on with some sidebar research and writing. Abra Berkowitz, who worked with me as an independent study, needs special mention for her boundless enthusiasm, the old articles she excavated, her passionate questions and exclamatory notes in the margins, the YouTube videos of Joan Baez, and her attention and interest in this project long past the conﬁnes of receiving a grade. Her ability to relate to these women, many of whom are exponentially older than her own nineteen years, demonstrates that the appeal of these artists extends far beyond arbitrary designations like age. The interlibrary loan, circulation, and reference staffs of Skillman Library at Lafayette College worked tirelessly to track down obscure pieces of data and procure the many materials necessary to undertake a task of this scope. To them I say: Thank you, thank you, thank you. I have to thank my parents, Chuck and Susan, who immersed us in a disparate musical environment—Lambert Hendricks and Ross, Barbra Streisand, The Beatles, Cal Tjader, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and the entire American songbook—which encouraged my curious approach to music and, later, cultural forms in general. My sister Christy offered levity just by being herself; I relied on her entertaining and reassuring responses to my Instant Messenger questions seeking gut-check reactions to a-ha insights throughout my writing. On a professional note, the work of Ellen Willis was an early and signiﬁcant inﬂuence on my thinking (and writing) about feminism, politics, and popular culture. I was blessed to have the opportunity to study with her as a graduate

xii

Acknowledgments

student at New York University, an experience that offered solace that I could possibly make a living writing about music and popular culture. She, along with Susie Linﬁeld, helped me through what then felt like somewhat inchoate responses to the cultural landscape. And the writing of Ann Powers illustrated continuity and gave me hope that women of another generation were still ﬁnding much to say—and doing so in artful, provocative ways—about women, music, pop culture, politics, and everything in between. Finally and most important, none of this would be possible or worthwhile without my husband John, the original, irreplaceable music maker in my life. Thank you, in this case, is an understatement.

Introduction What is an icon? What is popular music? What constitutes a female icon in popular music? These are loaded questions, brimming with complicated, discussion-inducing answers. When compiling the list for the twenty-four icons in this book, it was useful to start off by consulting the dictionary. But that move initially made things trickier, as the ﬁrst deﬁnition of the word indicates a pictorial representation, and the second deﬁnition involves the creation of a religious image used for devotional purposes. Although some of the icons in this book boast fans who are ardent and dedicated, that connotation does not satisfy, either. The third deﬁnition, “an object of uncritical devotion: idol,” brings us closer. This deﬁnition, though, seems to negate our ability to be discerning and discourages the use of subjectivity, which is delightfully, frustratingly, at the core of listening to and talking about music. Finally, the fourth deﬁnition, “emblem, symbol,” seems more open-ended and suitable to a wider range of musicians. Regardless of their differences (which we embrace), the women in this two-volume set symbolize a particular moment, aspect, quality, genre, emotion, or memory in the relatively short but extraordinarily diverse twentieth-century convention known as popular music. In the process of selecting candidates for this book, I discussed with my editors whether or not the artist in question has, during the course of her career, produced compelling material and demonstrated an essential star, or iconic, quality. Furthermore, we also looked at whether she exempliﬁes an outstanding level of artistic and/or commercial achievement. Artists such as Madonna, Dolly Parton, Diana Ross, and Tina Turner came to mind quickly—women whose grit and determination and pronounced, early ambition set them apart from their peers and catapulted them to international fame and multiplatinum sales. But beyond this stellar success, these women are true trailblazers who inﬂuenced many artists who followed—and in some cases also creatively deviated—from their footsteps. Reading the remarkable stories of others— such as Patsy Cline and Janis Joplin—that are comprised of much personal

xiv

Introduction

struggle highlighted the inevitability of their success and underscored the sadness of their tragic, early passing. Cline and Joplin have become icons of country-pop crossover and blues-rock, respectively, and their discovery by younger generations of fans and artists via greatest hits collections and boxed sets attests to their powerful legacies. Admittedly, some of the artists we chose for this volume have not reached multiplatinum commercial sales—at least not yet. But that is not, nor should it be, a determining factor for inclusion; neither is it solely a marker of one’s relevance or importance. Such a fact, however, ought not discredit the impact and reach of those whose work means something very speciﬁc or captures the zeitgeist in some way. We simply cannot compare the monumental, unprecedented success of Dolly Parton or Madonna—who boast millions of albums sold worldwide—to that of Suzanne Vega, Liz Phair, or Patti Smith, for example. The music world would not be the same without the spare, sensitive, and socially conscious imagery in Suzanne Vega’s songwriting. Nor would the landscape of pop music in the late 1990s and onward be the same without risk-takers such as Liz Phair, who boldly tackled the male rock canon of the Rolling Stones on her debut Exile in Guyville. Nor would punk-pop be the same without Patti Smith, an unapologetic icon-worshipper herself, and her approach to music as performance art. Ironically, she is iconic herself, embodying a particular downtown–New York aesthetic sensibility. Vega showed other female artists that it was possible to combine the impulses of folk music and reach the masses. Phair’s work brought out the latent anger in her female listeners and suggested that it was perfectly justiﬁable for women to use bluntly honest sexual references and, when necessary, curse words in songwriting. And Smith, an androgynous artist with a capital A, inﬁltrated the world of Baudelaire and punk rock. Her path created a trajectory for those artists— male and female alike—who felt restricted by what they felt were arbitrary designations, such as gender, even as such artists remain cognizant to the ways in which it informs their process. Idiosyncratic artists such as these (and others found in these two volumes such as Joni Mitchell and Tori Amos) give us permission to have a larger—and necessary—conversation about art, feminism, politics, performance, image, and songwriting. We also took into consideration the formative impact these female performers had on other artists, whether that meant contemporaries or future generations. Many of the sidebars to the entries are devoted to some of those deserving female artists whose careers could not be overlooked because they showed a lineage to the women in this set. For example, the sidebar in the entry on Patsy Cline, a ﬁrecracker of a woman with a big, conﬁdent voice, focuses on the Dixie Chicks, whose crossover success in the pop world from country music and outspoken ways illustrate a direct link to Cline. The sidebars also enable an exploration of trends and moments in popular music as they pertain to these women. We are able to explore in detail, for example, Lilith Fair, a traveling concert full of female artists organized by

Introduction

Sarah McLachlan during three summers in the late 1990s. Its sellout success forced the music business to acknowledge not only the very real artistic power of these women but the very real and heretofore largely untapped commercial power of female audiences. Including Ani DiFranco in this set, an artist whose career trajectory was sharply rising during the 1990s, allowed us to explore and focus further on her staunchly independent ethos and her label, Righteous Babe Records. And at times, the subject matter of these sidebars dovetails across musical genres. Looking at Madonna in the context of the dawn of music videos reveals her shrewd understanding (and successful control) of her image as an early and enthusiastic adopter of MTV. Fifteen years later, Missy Elliott does something similar with image making in the context of hip-hop, by surprising and shocking fans and the hip-hop community through her own fearless fashion sense and creative restlessness that compels her to never create the same video—or costume—twice. Thus, by asking who we consider to be icons, we found ourselves thinking in adjectives rather than genres: creative, exemplary, intriguing, controversial, groundbreaking, singular, iconoclastic, savvy, feisty, and innovative. Ultimately, when considering these women, their decisions, their achievements, and, most important, their music had to feel necessary to the concept of popular music. Consequently, if they were essential to the evolution of popular music, they must have a home in these two volumes. In discussions with my editor Kristi Ward and editorial consultant Chris Smith, we tried to create a list of women who felt absolutely essential to our understanding of popular music. Because our approach permitted a generous deﬁnition, it logically followed that the conversation could include the early crossover success of country-pop singer Patsy Cline as much it included the multiplatinum R&B artist Mary J. Blige or the eccentric but engaging Tori Amos. This more encompassing approach was also something my editors felt was largely absent among shorter, less indepth women in rock books. Invariably, some readers may disagree with our choices or wonder why certain artists were omitted. As a two-volume set that is geared toward use by high school and college students, along with general readers and fans who are seeking a deeper perspective on what constitutes a female pop music icon, such conversation is welcome. Music critics have been constructively arguing about such ideas for years. Although not every reader may sit down and read the text from start to ﬁnish, those who do and those who read through a few chapters will likely encounter some thematic elements that unite these women. Furthermore, as I researched and read about these women, I began to uncover similarities, some of which were surprising, in their struggles, trajectories, backgrounds, or ideals. When examining the early years of artists such as Diana Ross, Dolly Parton, and Madonna, for example, it becomes clear that all three women possessed an unwavering ambition and unassailable sense of their own fame and musical destiny. Many share an initial early interest in other art forms like painting or dance, such as Joni Mitchell, Madonna, Ani DiFranco, Liz Phair,

xv

xvi

Introduction

and Suzanne Vega. Others, like Tina Turner and Emmylou Harris, discovered some of their hidden talents late in their careers; Turner found her voice when she became liberated from her difﬁcult marriage to Ike, and Harris, who has been a much sought-after guest vocalist, found her own voice by writing much more of her own material. Joplin, Turner, and Blige are united by the personal pain that has galvanized their music and performance, which then gave them a reason for triumph. Joni Mitchell and Carole King share the odd distinction of marriages that shaped their work, albeit in different ways. Despite her short marriage to Chuck Mitchell, Joni Mitchell retained his surname as she made a name for herself, and King gained early success with her husband, Gerry Gofﬁn, during the songwriting heyday of the early 1960s before striking out on her own later in the decade. For many of these women the 1960s was formative—either as immediate cultural participants (such as Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, or Janis Joplin, whose work broadened the possibilities for female singers and songwriters) or for those whose work bears the inﬂuence of the decade’s ideals. For example, many of these women have used their celebrity as a consciousness raiser in some way, shape, or form. Joan Baez made a career out of strongly weaving her beliefs into her songwriting and ﬁghting for causes she believed in and inﬂuenced generations of women; she calls the folk-rock duo the Indigo Girls her “young whipper-snappers” due to their shared impulses to make the world a better place through activism and the belief that folk music in particular is best suited for conveying socially conscious messages. Bonnie Raitt, a longsuffering artist whose heady, gutsy mix of blues, rock, and roots music took nearly twenty years to catch on with audiences, is a veteran supporter of nuclear disarmament and established the beneﬁt concerts called No Nukes to rally concern and cash for her ideals. Years later, this impulse was present when Chrissie Hynde, a vegetarian, found herself getting arrested at PETA demonstrations and Tori Amos created RAINN, an organization geared toward providing for women who have been victims of abuse. Through her music and her record label, Ani DiFranco embodies many of the 1960s ideals about making the world a better place, but she also infuses it with a punk rock, do-it-yourself impulse and blends in her own feminism and self-determinism to become the ultimate independent artist. Finally, a woman in the music business is situated in a traditionally maledominated industry, which can mean she is one woman ﬁghting against a larger system that often leaves her subjected to a process of decision making, image making, and money making that may be beyond her control. Refusing to be victim to what feminist ﬁlm theorist Laura Mulvey termed “the male gaze,” many of the icons here took the reins of their careers, called the shots, and tried to create their own paths on their own terms. Many of them played with, manipulated, and/or subverted the idea of what it meant to be a sex symbol. We see this with Debbie Harry, who gave her band the name Blondie as a tongue-in-cheek reference to the catcalls she would receive on the streets

Introduction

of New York. She deliberately subverted the ideas of movie star glamour before Madonna had even moved to New York. Madonna made image reinvention her mission throughout her career. Liz Phair still shows a ﬂirtation with these ideas and expectations about female behavior even as her material reinvented itself for a larger, younger audience that was unburdened by her previous devil-may-care indie rock persona. Others show different approaches to this idea and have created new paradigms. The tough-and-tender Chrissie Hynde is essentially the Pretenders, but she feels most comfortable as front woman leading a group of men. With her ﬂaming red mane and scorching guitar skills, Bonnie Raitt often appears to be one of the guys, joking and getting along in a historically male-dominated ﬁeld—blues. And Joni Mitchell just did what she wanted, the way she wanted—confessional songwriting— but never stopped there. Throughout her career she has followed her own muse (much like Patti Smith) and always emerges as someone who anticipates a trend or explores a sound well in advance of the rest of mainstream American popular music. The number twenty-four initially seemed limiting, but it forced all of us involved to shape the content in a compelling, unique way. If the careers of these women are, to borrow a phrase from Tori Amos, “little earthquakes,” the women they’ve inﬂuenced are the aftershocks. Through these twenty-four icons we are permitted a glimpse at what came before them and what has followed. Based on what we’ve uncovered, we can speculate about what is yet to come for women in popular music. But because of the depth and breadth of biography and criticism these chapters encompass, we can now have a conversation that deepens their reach, makes plain their roots, and leaves us all rocking in their wake.

xvii

Timeline 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958

1959

1960

1961

Patsy Cline signs with Four-Star/Decca. Patsy Cline sings on the Grand Ole Opry at age twenty-two. Anna Mae Bullock (Tina Turner) meets Ike Turner. At age fourteen Aretha Franklin makes her recording debut on a gospel album for Chess Records. “Walkin’ After Midnight” by Patsy Cline becomes a number two country hit and a number twelve pop singles hit. Carole King and Gerry Gofﬁn start working at Aldon Music, across the street from the Brill Building in New York City. At Aldon, they compose “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?,” “Take Good Care of My Baby,” and the number one hit “The Loco-Motion.” Anna Mae Bulock is renamed “Tina Turner” by Ike Turner, with whom she had been performing as part of his Rhythm Kings. Joan Baez makes her public debut at the Newport Folk Festival. Dolly Parton makes her ﬁrst appearance at the Grand Ole Opry at the age of thirteen. A year later, she receives her ﬁrst recording contract for the song “Puppy Love” with Mercury Records. Patsy Cline becomes a member of the Grand Ole Opry. Carole King marries songwriting partner Gerry Gofﬁn; she is just eighteen years old. Cline suffers a severe auto accident and almost dies; “I Fall to Pieces” goes to number one on the country chart. The Supremes sign to Tamla, a subsidiary of Motown. Aretha Franklin releases Aretha, her major label recording debut on Columbia Records. “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine,” a song by Ike and Tina Turner, hits number fourteen on the pop charts and number two on the R&B charts on the heels of 1960’s hit “A Fool In Love,” which

xx

Timeline

1962

1963

1964

1965

1966

1967

1968

went to number three on the R&B chart and twenty-seven on pop charts. Cline reports premonitions of her death to friends June Carter, Loretta Lynn, and Dottie West. Joan Baez sees three of her albums hit the Top 20—Joan Baez in Concert, Joan Baez, Volume 2, and Joan Baez hit number ten, thirteen, and ﬁfteen, respectively on the pop albums chart. Patsy Cline dies in March in a plane crash at age thirty. Joan Baez meets relatively unknown folk singer Bob Dylan. By the following year they are performing together and become the “It” couple of protest folk music. The Supremes have their ﬁrst smash number one hit with “Where Did Our Love Go?” Linda Ronstadt drops out of college and moves to California to pursue music fulltime. Shortly thereafter, she joins the band the Stone Poneys, but the band breaks up in early 1968. She begins her solo recording, which results in her 1969 debut Hand Sown . . . Home Grown. Roberta Joan Anderson marries songwriter Chuck Mitchell and ofﬁcially becomes Joni Mitchell. The marriage doesn’t last, but the name sticks. Three years later she releases her debut Song to a Seagull. Aretha Franklin signs with Atlantic Records; a year later, her breakthrough smash album I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You is released. The single “Respect” is certiﬁed gold; several months later “Baby I Love You” also receives gold certiﬁcation as a single. “Respect” earns her two Grammy Awards. Janis Joplin moves back to San Francisco and auditions for the band Big Brother and the Holding Company. The following summer she takes the crowd by storm at Monterey International Pop Music Festival, regarded by many as a precursor to Woodstock. Tina Turner records the River Deep, Mountain High record with producer Phil Spector. Ike and Tina tour with the Rolling Stones, and Tina teaches Mick Jagger how to dance. Patsy Cline’s Greatest Hits, a collection of her twelve most successful singles, including seven of her eight Top 10 country hits, is released. After personnel issues illustrate that Janis Joplin is destined for bigger things, she leaves Big Brother and the Holding Company in the fall. The following spring, she suffers a serious drug overdose but still manages to release her ﬁrst solo album, I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!

Timeline

1969

1970

1971

1972

xxi

Carole King and Gerry Gofﬁn split up as a married couple but continue working as songwriting partners. Woodstock, the three-day festival of music, takes place in the summer on a farm in upstate New York. Joan Baez is a featured performer, along with Janis Joplin. Joni Mitchell is slated to perform but does not; her song “Woodstock,” however, is later recorded by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, which performs at the festival along with Jimi Hendrix, the Band, Grateful Dead, and other contemporary acts. At age twenty, Bonnie Raitt appears with Buddy Guy and Junior Wells as part of their opening act for the Rolling Stones. Two years later her self-titled debut is released. Janis Joplin dies of a drug overdose before the release of her second album, Pearl. Diana Ross plays her ﬁnal concert with the Supremes and releases her ﬁrst single, “Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hand),” in the spring. Joan Baez has a number three pop singles hit and a number one adult contemporary hit with her spirited cover of the Robbie Robertson–penned song “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” “Joshua” becomes Dolly Parton’s ﬁrst number one country hit. Three years later, her signature song “Jolene” becomes her second number one country hit. Carole King releases her breakthrough solo record Tapestry, which contains the number one hits “I Feel the Earth Move” and “It’s Too Late.” The record also nabs her four Grammy Awards in one year: She becomes the ﬁrst woman to do so. Joni Mitchell releases her landmark album Blue, and the dawn of the confessional singer/songwriter movement arrives. Patti Smith reads her poetry at St. Mark’s Poetry Project in New York City for the ﬁrst time; in the spring of the following year, her ﬁrst volume of poetry, Seventh Heaven, is published. The Ike and Tina Turner song “Proud Mary” hits number four on the pop singles charts. Linda Ronstadt’s self-titled album peaks at thirty-ﬁve on the country album charts and also squeaks into the pop albums chart at 163, marking the ﬁrst time she hits both the country and pop charts for the same record. Diana Ross’s album Lady Sings the Blues, released as the soundtrack to the ﬁlm in which she plays Billie Holiday, becomes a number one hit. Ross is nominated for an Oscar and receives a Golden Globe Award.

xxii

Timeline

1973 1973 1974

1975

1976

1977

1978

Patsy Cline becomes the ﬁrst solo female artist to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Emily Saliers and Amy Ray meet in grammar school in Decatur, Georgia. Debbie Harry and Chris Stein form the punk-pop band Blondie in New York City. Heart Like a Wheel becomes Linda Ronstadt’s breakthrough crossover hit, peaking in top slots on both country and pop charts. Emmylou Harris’s album Pieces of the Sky, her ﬁrst for a major label, hits number seven on the country chart, and “Too Far Gone” becomes a number thirteen hit on the country singles chart. One year later, Elite Hotel becomes her ﬁrst number one country record; yields two number one country singles, “Sweet Dreams,” and “Together Again”; and leads to her ﬁrst Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. Bonnie Raitt, who was an early favorite by critics but not yet a commercial success, appears on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine for the ﬁrst time. Clive Davis signs Patti Smith to a seven-album deal with the label Arista for $750,000. Later that year, her critically and commercially acclaimed record Horses is released. Linda Ronstadt nearly repeats her 1975 success with the record Hasten Down the Wind, which peaks at number one on the country album chart and number three on the pop albums chart. Patti Smith and her band make their television debut as the musical guests of Saturday Night Live. Tina Turner breaks away from Ike Turner and becomes a Buddhist, which empowers her to ﬁnally leave him for good. Suzanne Vega lands her ﬁrst gig in a church basement near 81st Street and West End Avenue in New York, at the age of sixteen. Blondie signs to Chrysalis Records and releases Plastic Letters, tours with Iggy Pop, and breaks through in the United Kingdom with the song “Denis.” Dolly Parton wins her ﬁrst Grammy Award. The album Here You Come Again nabs a statue for Best Female Country Vocal Performance and was a number one country album hit the previous year. Madonna drops out of college and moves to New York to pursue her dance career. Chrissie Hynde forms the Pretenders, whose members eventually include James Honeyman-Scott, Pete Farndon, and Martin Chambers. Within four years, however, Honeyman-Scott and Farndon die of drug-related causes, beginning a series of personnel shifts through the course of the band’s career.

Timeline

1979

1980

1981

1982

1983

xxiii

Patti Smith has a productive year: Her fourth volume of poetry, Babel, is published, along with her third album, Easter. She also appears on the cover of Rolling Stone. At the age of nine, Ani DiFranco gets her ﬁrst guitar and soon thereafter plays her ﬁrst public gig. Blondie’s album Parallel Lines becomes a number six pop albums hit, aided by the number one smash single “Heart of Glass” and the strength of two other singles, “One Way or Another” and “Hanging on the Telephone.” Mingus, Joni Mitchell’s foray into jazz, is released and is mostly misunderstood and unappreciated, but it shows how far ahead of the curve the artist is in predicting musical currents. Aretha Franklin changes labels to Arista Records. Two years later, Jump To It goes gold. Three years after that, her career is completely rejuvenated with the multiplatinum success of the record Who’s Zoomin’ Who? Fueled by Chrissie Hynde’s sassy, no-nonsense delivery, the Pretenders song “Brass in Pocket” becomes a number fourteen hit in the United States, propelling the band’s self-titled album, also released that year, into the Top 10. Bonnie Raitt performs at the historic No Nukes beneﬁt concert at Madison Square Garden and co-founds Muse (Musicians for Safe Energy). Linda Ronstadt appears in New York Shakespeare Festival’s presentation of The Pirates of Penzance. Amy Ray and Emily Saliers make a basement recording called Tuesday’s Children. Diana Ross sings a duet with Lionel Richie, “Endless Love,” used in the ﬁlm of the same name. It spent nine weeks at number one. Madonna meets John “Jellybean” Benitez, a producer with whom she will have a relationship both personal and professional. He becomes involved in her hit “Holiday,” which became her ﬁrst Top 40 hit. Two members of the Pretenders, Pete Farndon and James Honeyman-Scott, die within weeks of each other due to drug-related causes. Two years later, a reformulated line-up has success with the release Learning to Crawl. Madonna releases her self-titled debut on Sire Records, and by a little more than a year after its release, in December 1984, it has sold 2 million copies. Linda Ronstadt records What’s New?, an album of standards with arrangements by Nelson Riddle, and it becomes a tripleplatinum success very quickly. It’s followed by similar-themed

xxiv

Timeline

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988 1989

projects, Lush Life (1984) and For Sentimental Reasons (1986), also with Riddle. Suzanne Vega signs a record deal with A&M. Diana Ross, Cindy Birdsong, and Mary Wilson brieﬂy reunite for the television special Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever. Tina Turner’s debut solo record Private Dancer, released at the age of forty-ﬁve, launches her comeback status and becomes a top ﬁve hit and a number one R&B hit. Turner also wins four Grammys for the record, including Record of the Year and Song of the Year for “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” Amy Ray and Emily Saliers call themselves the Indigo Girls. Three years later Epic Records signs the group, and in 1989, their self-titled second album comes out and receives gold certiﬁcation, buoyed by the Top 40 hit “Closer to Fine.” Madonna begins collaborating with songwriter and producer Patrick Leonard. The partnership will yield some of her biggest hits of the decade, including “Live to Tell,” “La Isla Bonita,” “Cherish,” and “Like a Prayer.” They work together periodically, most notably up through her 1998 album Ray of Light. Tina Turner’s tell-all autobiography, I, Tina, written with Kurt Loder is published and sets the record straight on her tumultuous relationship with Ike. Tori Amos is signed to Atlantic Records. One year later she and her band release the forgettable self-titled record Y Kant Tori Read. Canadian singer/songwriter Sarah McLachlan writes her ﬁrst song and signs with Nettwerk, a small Canadian label, but it’s not until her 1994 album Fumbling Towards Ecstasy that McLachlan becomes a household word. In the second year of its induction process, Aretha Franklin becomes the ﬁrst woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, alongside B.B. King, Bill Haley, Bo Diddley, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, and Muddy Waters. Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton, and Emmylou Harris release their joint effort Trio after a decade in the making. It nabs them a Grammy Award for Best Recording. Suzanne Vega’s second record, Solitude Standing, is released, and the single “Luka,” about child abuse, goes to number three on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts. After a hiatus from recording through much of the earlier part of the decade, Patti Smith releases the record Dream of Life. Rap is added as a new category to the Billboard charts and Mary J. Blige is signed to Uptown Records.

Timeline

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

xxv

Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith’s longtime friend and creative guru, dies of complications from HIV-AIDS. Ani DiFranco moves to New York City and releases her ﬁrst album, by herself, on cassette. One year later, she forms her very own Righteous Babe Records. Bonnie Raitt ﬁnally breaks through and receives commercial acclaim, two years after becoming clean and sober, with her ﬁrst release for Capitol Records, the aptly-titled and Grammy Award-winning Nick of Time. Amy Ray forms the independent, not-for-proﬁt label Daemon Records in Decatur, Georgia. Some of its artists include Rose Polenzani, Danielle Howle, and the group Magnapop. Carole King and Gerry Gofﬁn are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Mary J. Blige meets hip-hop producer and budding mogul Sean “Puffy” Combs. Ike and Tina Turner are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Missy Elliott’s ﬁrst all-girl group Sista meets DeVante Swing, who signs them to his label. Liz Phair is signed to Matador Records and starts writing and recording what will become her ambitious 1993 debut record Exile in Guyville, designed as a song-by-song response to the Rolling Stones record Exile on Main Street. Madonna forms her own music and publishing company, Maverick, with Time Warner and releases the expensive coffee table erotica photography book Sex, which sells a million copies within a week. Suzanne Vega gets some production assistance from Mitchell Froom on the experimental 99.9 F. The pair marry in 1995 and divorce in 1998. Liz Phair’s record Exile in Guyville tops many best-of lists, including The Village Voice and Spin magazine. The ﬁlm adaptation of Turner’s autobiography, What’s Love Got To Do With It?, is released; she appears in the ﬁnal sequence of the ﬁlm; the soundtrack is also released. Tori Amos co-founds the organization RAINN for women who have been victims of abuse. Her second album, Under the Pink, receives platinum status by the year’s end. Aretha Franklin receives a Kennedy Center honor and a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement. Patti Smith’s husband Fred Smith passes away, followed one month later by the death of her brother Tony. Her 1996 record Gone Again eulogizes their passing. One year later, poets

xxvi

Timeline

1995

1996

1997

1998 1999

William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg also die, inspiring her record Peace and Noise. Wrecking Ball, with its eerie sounds and textures, becomes Emmylou Harris’s comeback record, exposing her to a younger generation of listeners. Missy Elliott works with childhood friend and producer Timbaland on songs for R&B singer Aaliyah’s second album One in a Million. Its success leads her to leverage a deal with Elektra to launch her own imprint, Gold Mind. Ani DiFranco’s album Dilate debuts at number eighty-seven on the Billboard 200 album chart, a milestone for an independent release. Madonna appears in the starring role of the ﬁlm Evita, playing Evita Perón, garnering arguably her best reviews to date for a ﬁlm role and winning her a Golden Globe for Best Actress Musical or Comedy. Missy Elliott’s ﬁrst solo album Supa Dupa Fly debuts at number three on the Billboard pop albums chart and goes platinum within three months of its release. It also becomes a number one hit on the R&B/hip-hop album chart. Joni Mitchell is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, along with contemporaries Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Sarah McLachlan founds the all-female touring summer music festival Lilith Fair, which runs through the next two years. Indigo Girls, the Pretenders, Liz Phair, Emmylou Harris, and Suzanne Vega are among those who perform. The festival draws more than 2 million people and raises more than $7 million for charities and nonproﬁt organizations beneﬁting women and humanitarian causes. Blondie reunites and plans an album, No Exit, and accompanying tour for the following year. Patsy Cline receives a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; Dolly Parton is inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. The music downloading software Napster is born and enables users to illegally download music for free. Its popularity signals a huge shift in the music business. Its success—and ultimately its court-ordered shuttering—helps give rise to Apple computer’s iTunes, which launches an online music store in 2003 and within ﬁve years, becomes the number one retailer of music in the United States with more than 4 billion songs sold. Billboard names Emmylou Harris as the recipient of the Century Award, its highest honor. She was only the eighth recipient at the time, in the same company as James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Buddy Guy, and George Harrison.

Timeline

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

xxvii

Emmylou Harris’s record Red Dirt Girl is a signature effort of mostly her own songwriting, the ﬁrst of its ilk since her 1985 quasi-autobiographical record The Ballad of Sally Rose. During this year she also appears in the awardwinning soundtrack to the ﬁlm O Brother, Where Art Thou? Bonnie Raitt is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the same year as James Taylor and Eric Clapton. Missy Elliott wins her ﬁrst Grammy Award for Best Rap Solo Performance for the hit song “Get Ur Freak On.” Suzanne Vega organizes Vigil: N.Y. Songs Since 9/11, a record designed to beneﬁt widows and family members of those who lost loved ones in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Proceeds went to the Windows of Hope Family Relief Fund. Missy Elliott’s song “Work It” becomes a top ﬁve hit across six different Billboard charts, hitting number one on three of them. Gibson names a line of guitars, the Emmylou Harris L-200, in honor of the artist. Joni Mitchell, appearing increasingly cranky and discontent in the few interviews she grants to journalists, announces she is retiring from the music business. Mary J. Blige receives her ﬁrst Grammy Award as a solo artist for the song “He Thinks I Don’t Know,” in the category of Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. In 1995, she had won a Grammy as part of a duet she performed with Method Man called “I’ll Be There For You/You’re All I Need To Get By.” Tori Amos founds the Bridge Entertainment Group with longtime tour managers Chelsea Laird and John Witherspoon for artists who are in transition between projects, labels, or ideas. After a ﬁve-year absence from the record stores, the self-titled, aggressively produced Liz Phair is released to much ballyhoo. Old fans criticize its commercial pop sound and call her a sellout, but the song “Why Can’t I?” becomes a big hit and receives gold certiﬁcation. Madonna publishes her ﬁrst children’s book, The English Rose. It sells well and is followed quickly by three more children’s books within the next year. Respect M.E., Missy Elliott’s line of clothing, is launched in conjunction with Adidas. Verve Records releases Linda Ronstadt’s ﬁrst jazz record in nearly twenty years, Hummin’ to Myself. Carole King’s career receives a big boost after launching a small-scale tour called The Living Room Tour, which results in a two-CD set and DVD of the live performance.

xxviii

Timeline

2006

2007

2008

Legendary New York music club CBGB closes its doors after extensive protests, some of them from Debbie Harry and Patti Smith, among others. Blondie is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Joan Baez receives a lifetime achievement Grammy Award—it is her sole award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Suzanne Vega’s Beauty & Crime is released on Blue Note Records; many of its songs are love letters to her native New York City. Patti Smith is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, an honor that she felt uneasy about—so much so that she wrote an editorial about it for the New York Times. Joni Mitchell releases the acclaimed record Shine; and jazz musician Herbie Hancock’s album of interpretations of her songs, River: The Joni Letters, is released and wins the coveted Album of the Year Award at the Grammys. Madonna is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and several months later releases Hard Candy, her last contractually obligated album for Warner Brothers. The record climbs to the top of the Canadian, Internet, and Billboard 200 charts simultaneously. At the age of sixty-eight, Tina Turner announces that she is returning to the concert circuit in the United States for the ﬁrst time in seven years. ATO Records, the label founded by musician Dave Matthews, announces it will release a ﬁfteenth anniversary edition of Liz Phair’s debut Exile in Guyville, along with B-sides and a special DVD. She also announces that ATO will release her new album in the fall.

Courtesy of Photofest

Tori Amos

2

Women Icons of Popular Music

OVERVIEW Tori Amos is one of the most unusual success stories to emerge from the world of popular music in the 1990s. Melding her classical piano training, her curiosity about human nature, and an unconventional and occasionally arresting approach to songwriting and performance, Amos’s musical lineage traces itself to England’s Kate Bush for her otherworldly approach and Joni Mitchell because of the confessional nature of her lyrics. Much of Amos’s material is grounded in an examination of feminism and womanhood. Idiosyncratic, fearless, smart, and warm, Amos has an intensely loyal fan base and is surprisingly accessible to her fans. She is also well known for (and sometimes chided by critics because of) her exuberant, sensual approach to playing the piano. Fans were initially surprised by her early concerts, during which she frequently would be writhing, wriggling, and pounding away on the piano— redeﬁning the way in which women relate to musical instruments and reclaiming a little piece of pop music for herself. Known for her vivid imagination, a keen grasp of metaphor, and a tendency toward personiﬁcation—she refers to her songs as “my girls”—Amos constantly pushes, plays, and pokes at the boundaries we inhabit within ourselves, in our relationships to others, and in our world. Some have called her “perversely cryptic,” but Amos believes each song has its own life force, its own agenda, and its own mission. If you listen to her music long enough, you start to grasp the intricate inner logic at work. Almost every single one of Amos’s albums has at least gone gold except for three: a cover album, Strange Little Girls (2001); The Beekeeper (2005); and American Doll Posse (2007). Little Earthquakes (1992), Under the Pink (1994), Boys for Pele (1996), From the Choirgirl Hotel (1998), and To Venus and Back (1999) have all been certiﬁed platinum at least once. Additionally, three video collections, Little Earthquakes, The Complete Videos 1992–1998, and Welcome to Sunny Florida, are all certiﬁed gold. Amos has seen her albums achieve spots on a handful of different charts, including a number one slot for Little Earthquakes on the Heatseekers chart and a number one slot for To Venus and Back for Top Internet Albums. Nearly every other release placed in the Billboard 200; the thorny Boys for Pele even peaked at number two, and From the Choirgirl Hotel, number ﬁve. Her songs have made thirty appearances to date on various Billboard singles charts, from adult Top 40 to the Hot 100 to modern rock tracks to hot dance music/club play, which says as much about her wide appeal as it does the increasingly fragmented, diversiﬁed nature of the music culture of the 1990s. Amos has earned eight Grammy Award nominations for not only her music but also for the packaging of one release: a limited edition of Scarlet’s Walk. Strange Little Girls received a nomination for Best Female Rock Performance for “Strange Little Girl” and a nomination for Best Alternative Music Performance. Boys for Pele also gained her a nomination for Best Alternative Music

Tori Amos

Performance. In 1999, From the Choirgirl Hotel earned her a nomination for Best Alternative Music Performance and Best Female Rock Vocal Performance for the song “Raspberry Swirl.” To Venus and Back also earned two nominations in 2000: one for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance for “Bliss” and one for Best Alternative Music Performance. Despite these accolades, she has yet to win a Grammy. One of Amos’s most striking characteristics is her extreme approachability and warmth. She takes seriously her relationship to her audience and her fans and attempts to encourage them to ﬁnd their own creative calling (Amos and Powers 2005, 8). Many fans, taking solace from the difﬁcult stories her songs have told—especially the a capella “Me and a Gun,” told from the perspective of a woman being raped—have written her letters and have visited her backstage, seeking counsel and telling her how much her music has been a comfort. In fact, one such conversation was with a fourteen-year-old girl who came backstage after a concert to have a cup of tea with Amos. The girl begged her to take her on tour with her, and Amos asked why. The girl revealed, “when I get home I will be raped by my stepfather like I was last night and will be tomorrow. I have been raped for seven years” (Bell 1999). In June 1994 Amos co-founded the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN). The network is comprised of a toll-free phone number that connects callers with their local rape crisis center. Since its inception, the nonproﬁt organization, which is the largest anti–sexual assault organization in the United States, has assisted more than 900,000 people. Its mission is to assist victims of sexual assault and ensure that rapists are brought to justice. The organization has forged many relationships with community outreach organizations and entertainers to spread its message at concerts, on college campuses, and in communities. The commercial and critical success of Tori Amos is no small matter; it has paved the way for and inspired a whole generation of female singer/songwriters, granting them the right to work out their own demons and thoughts on the piano. Many of these women share Amos’s penchants for thorny, introspective, surprising material. Most notably, Amos has inﬂuenced and made possible the work of Fiona Apple, Paula Cole, Nellie McKay, Regina Spektor, Leona Naess, Kate Earl, Sonya Kitchell, and to some degree Norah Jones (see sidebar). By the time Scarlet’s Walk was released in 2002, Amos’s commercial popularity had started to fade slightly, although she currently enjoys a loyal cult following around the world and her tours regularly sell out. Her concerts are legendary, intense affairs, noted for their constantly changing set lists, thus inspiring already devoted fans to attend multiple performances. Amos believes that each city, each new location, has its own energy; this helps keep her live performances fresh and unique. She feels moved to respond to many different factors, from mundane items such as the news of the day in a particular city and the time of year to musical considerations such as creating seamless transitions, allowing for different instrumentation (organ, Rhodes, and the piano, for example), and establishing an emotional momentum for the audience.

3

4

Women Icons of Popular Music

A Legion of (Occasionally) Long-Haired Females Takes Its Place at the Piano Tori Amos has become known for her eccentricities, her classical training, and her intensely personal and imaginative songwriting. She has inspired a diverse generation of piano-playing, introspective female songwriters: the classically trained Russian émigré Regina Spektor; the wounded, engaging Fiona Apple; the ethereal Leona Naess; the folky-electronica Beth Orton; and even R&B pianist sensation Alicia Keys. Apple shares with Amos the sultry, sullen aspects of performance. Her multiplatinum 1996 debut Tidal created several successful singles: The knowing “Shadowboxer” and the bluesy “Criminal,” which starts with the lyric, “I’ve been a bad bad girl/I’ve been careless with a delicate man.” Like Amos’s Little Earthquakes, Tidal took critics by storm for its emotional depth and Apple’s virtuoso playing. Tidal and her 1999 follow-up When the Pawn . . . feature heavy contributions by the unconventional producer Jon Brion, known for lurching, nearly kaleidoscopic arrangements. In three albums over nine years, Apple has demonstrated a storyteller’s eye for detail and metaphor. Her songwriting has become more surprising and textured, especially on 2005’s Extraordinary Machine. Although Spektor has released only two albums via major labels—2004’s Soviet Kitsch and 2006’s Begin to Hope—she is also a critical favorite. Spektor shares with Amos a classical background, a lively percussive approach, and an elastic vocal style. Artsy like Amos, Spektor’s compositions often are sprawling numbers filled with her singing world-weary lyrics in a combination of English, French, and Russian. On Begin to Hope, Spektor added electric guitars and a drum kit and used her voice for percussive flourishes, especially on the engaging ode to relationship foolishness “Fidelity.” Begin to Hope poises her for a breakthrough; it has sold nearly 750,000 copies worldwide and spent five straight weeks at number one on the Billboard New Artist chart.

EARLY YEARS Tori Amos was born in Newton, North Carolina, in 1963 as Myra Ellen Amos, daughter of Edison Amos, a Methodist minister, and Mary Ellen Amos, a schoolteacher. Her family moved to Baltimore when she was two, and as a child, Amos was intellectually and musically precocious, always asking questions of her elders. She recalls her earliest musical memory as trying to get herself up on the piano stool at the age of about two and a half. By the age of four, she was playing piano and singing in the church choir; her father served as the pastor of a large church in Baltimore. Her parents, especially her father, encouraged this budding talent, and Amos started taking piano lessons on a scholarship at Baltimore’s Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University

Tori Amos

from 1968 to 1974. During her time at Peabody it eventually became apparent that she could play well by ear but that reading music was much more difﬁcult for her. The childhood she describes in her autobiography seems characterized by open intellectual discussion and debate at the dinner table regarding religion, politics, and other topics. Her parents, both educators by training though her mother stopped working to raise Amos and her older siblings Michael and Marie, created an environment where intelligent inquisition could ﬂourish. Both of her parents had an equal, albeit different, inﬂuence on her as an artist, a person, and a feminist. As an adult, Amos reports being impressed by her father’s humanitarian bent and his ability to minister to people in their time of need; it can be argued that much of what Amos does with her music is similar, because her songwriting often tackles difﬁcult material and crosses social taboos. He came from a Scots-Irish background. However, her mother’s side of the family—the Cherokee side—really impacted her life and her imagination. Amos was extremely close with her maternal grandfather, Calvin Clinton Copeland, whom she called Poppa and who passed away when she was nine and a half. In the summertime she would spend time at his home in North Carolina, where he would regale her with stories of her ancestors. His Southern colloquialisms, his Eastern Cherokee heritage, his gift for speaking in quaint metaphors, and his belief that all living things contained some special, intrinsic knowledge made an indelible impression on her during her formative years. He would also urge her to pay attention to the powerful stories of her ancestors. She learned, for instance, the Native American story of the Corn Mother and her reverence for what the Earth can provide. Amos remembers being impressed, too, with her Poppa’s perfect pitch; she recalls in her coauthored biography Piece by Piece many days when his rich tenor voice sang her to sleep. He told her stories of her ancestors, in particular the grandmother who raised him, Margaret Little, and whom he described as a ﬁerce, shrewd woman who survived the Trail of Tears by carefully wrapping and burying dry goods, food, and necessities in a white Christian graveyard. This strategy enabled her to evade the ransacking and pillaging of “the Bluecoats” because she knew that they, Christians themselves, would not attack a Christian burial ground. Amos’s paternal grandmother also held an important role in her life but not because the two got along well. Instead, she served as a catalyst for Amos to scrutinize her own beliefs more closely. An ordained Christian minister, missionary, and teacher, Addie Allen Amos (called Grandma) possessed a strict, unwavering interpretation of the Bible and was steadfast in her approach to serving as Amos’s grandmother and moral-checker. Amos refers to her as a “shame inducer” and was constantly falling out of favor and made to feel guilty for asking questions and playing music. Amos recalls an occasion where her Grandma punished her by “trying to pray the fear of Jesus into me” because she “talked out of line.” Amos felt she

5

6

Women Icons of Popular Music

needed to try to understand why her grandmother seemed so destructive (Amos and Powers 2005, 36). In Piece by Piece she notes that her ancestors from her father’s Irish side had been weavers, and Amos took this as her ﬁrst entry point to try to understand the woman’s control issues and how fear can force people to believe something. Amos says she decided she would “weave” herself into her grandmother’s mindset to understand her and ultimately show mercy on her (Amos and Powers 2005, 36). Perhaps what was most disappointing to Amos was the fact that her grandmother had received a college education in the 1920s, something unusual for a young woman at that time. “She was masquerading as a feminist while jailing the Feminine,” she says. Encountering such hypocrisy—or seeming contradiction— made a lasting impression on Amos. Still, she sagely reﬂects on her Grandma’s ways, saying that she recognized that Amos was different, which enabled her to understand herself as a child (Amos and Powers 2005, 36–37). Irrespective of her Grandma’s branding of her, Amos certainly was aware from a very young age that she was different. Not only her talent marked her, but her sensibility did too. She writes, “I was born a feminist. And then, at age ﬁve, when my strict Christian grandmother punished me, I realized, I’m not penetrating here. I’m just pissing people off. So I had to ﬁnd another way to penetrate” (12). But like almost every experience, Amos was able to learn something important from these negative encounters, and put those revelations to constructive creative and personal use. And as any budding songwriter would agree, music became an escape, a safe haven, and a wellspring of good energy. As a result of her grandmother’s inﬂuence, Amos realized something important. “I never would let anyone have power . . . that’s when I started writing songs that other people couldn’t walk into, and I discovered my creative spark” (Amos and Powers 2005, 41). Indeed, her family unknowingly helped lay the groundwork to create a complex, thoughtful, spiritual tapestry that is, admittedly, often oblique. This revelation from Amos sheds light on her songwriting and explains why her music often sounds to listeners like something more than a sophisticated metaphor: a puzzle, a secret language, an enigma. Her songs retain that quality to this day. The way in which Amos would explore her ideas was made more complicated, and arguably more interesting, by her burgeoning sense of inquisitiveness about patriarchy, religion, and personal sacriﬁces. Of particular interest was her mother, whom Amos says played the part of the perfect wife at church functions (41). Growing up, Amos had trouble reconciling this smart, progressive woman in private with the public submissive, docile persona. As Amos got older and was able to converse with her mother about this, she began to understand how women can contain multitudes. And this, naturally, ﬁltered into her music. Despite any perceived failings, Amos’s mother was still a strong role model. She would read to her daughter nearly every day, starting, of course, with children’s books but quickly moving on to more challenging texts. Her mother

Tori Amos

7

would read some of her own favorite poems and short stories from writers such as Robert Browning, Edgar Over a lifetime of learning to Allen Poe, and William Faulkner. Mary Ellen Amos compose, Tori Amos has was a major in literature in college, which she attended perfected her own methods for for two years before she left school and married Edi- transforming raw creative son. Amos describes her father as particularly encour- material into art. Her process aging of her career and as someone who believed in takes her from preliminary, and supported civil rights and the idea that women inspirational wanderings should be educated. Additionally, Amos credits her throughout the world and mother’s extensive record collection and her older within her well-stocked library brother Michael’s music as early inﬂuences; he to the calm space of her brought home the Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely workroom and then into the Hearts Club Band when she was a child. Growing up surrounded by both the written and oral recording studio, where she traditions of extended family, Amos says simply, “My leads her small crew of mother gave me the text and my father gave me theol- collaborators in realizing her ogy” (Amos and Powers 2005, 3). Her parents have compositions. —Ann Powers, music journalist remained important throughout her career. Despite the and biographer at times shockingly frank nature of her songs and their potential to offend, she and her parents have conversations about her music. In 1994, Edison Amos told a reporter for Washington Magazine, “We love her songs. We don’t always agree with everything she writes and says. But when she writes about God, she writes about how images of God are so extreme, and that males made the rules of religion and left women out” (Dalphonse 1994). Around age eleven or twelve, Amos had started asking teachers at the Peabody Conservatory—who were training her classically—about John Lennon and Paul McCartney. She was already interested in crossing boundaries, mixing genres, and creating something new with music. She wanted to know why the students were not permitted to learn and practice the music of these artists and why there was a separation between classical and popular music. Amos became particularly enamored with Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin and Elton John. She recalls her father coming home from meetings with Christian fathers, remarking that no one knew what to do about Led Zeppelin; no Christian father wanted the band’s records in the house. Because she had difﬁculty reading music and instead played by ear, she was reportedly kicked out of Peabody at age eleven. Undeterred, Amos continued her musical education in other venues. By the time she was fourteen, her father got her gigs playing standards several nights a week at hotels and Georgetown piano bars, including Mr. Henry’s, which had a primarily gay clientele. Although some family friends raised an eyebrow at a minister’s daughter playing at a gay bar, her father, ever tolerant and wise, knew that she would be left alone there. Performing cover tunes gave her experience and an opportunity to learn something new.

8

Women Icons of Popular Music

Amos used her middle name, Ellen, growing up, but spent much time while performing trying out other names for herself. The process of naming herself was an empowering step toward independence, especially because she shares elements of her name with her mother (Mary Ellen) and sister (Marie Allen). Because the name was prescribed to her, it did not feel unique; she felt limited. Finally, at age seventeen, the boyfriend of a friend of hers suggested the name Tori (Amos and Powers 2005, 53). It seemed to ﬁt: She liked its cadence and liked that it was part of other words—conservatory, victory, and many others. Thus, a new name gave her new potential, new opportunities, and the promise of personal growth and reinvention, as well as a reintegration of the various selves that were ﬁghting—and would continue to do so—to gain a voice and power, in her music.

CAREER PATH Though her relationship with her parents—especially her father—was close, like any rebellious teenager who wanted to make music, Amos knew that she had to ﬁnd her own voice and forge her own path. Despite the fact that she was earning her own money playing and singing she was still living at home, which meant she had to live with her father’s watchful eyes and strict curfews. Amos left Baltimore for Los Angeles in 1984 at the age of twenty-one, prompted by a friend (Stephen Himmelfarb), who left Washington, DC, for North Hollywood to become a sound engineer. For Amos, the departure amounted to something much more than just a stereotypical coming-of-age story. She had grown up with numerous stories of her ancestors and experienced the judgment of her strictly religious grandmother, so for her it was more a matter of ﬁnding her place in this family long history. The stories that had inhabited her were slowly beginning to itch to be told. Ironically, religion served as a wellspring of inspiration as Amos tried to reconcile dogma with reality and feminism with religion’s historic subjugation of women. After she moved to Los Angeles, where she lived in an apartment behind a Methodist church, Amos began to meet with A&R executives who kept telling her that “this piano girl thing is dead.” They did not think that her particular talents would appeal to listeners and that she might be too much of a retread of successful artists who had become prominent in the 1970s such as Joni Mitchell and Kate Bush, to whom Amos, ironically, would ultimately be compared. However, Amos managed to sign a six-record deal with Atlantic Records in 1987. Although she felt that what she was doing was not working—the executives did not have faith in her style—she swallowed her pride and did as instructed. The end result was an album (and band) called Y Kant Tori Read, released in 1988. The album was a cross between pop and metal,

Tori Amos

with Amos depicted on the cover wearing black, wielding a sword, with her scarlet hair teased out wildly. Titled as a self-deprecating nod to her inability to read music, this ﬁrst effort was a dismal failure—it sold very few copies and gained little airplay on radio. She recalls in her autobiography that at that time in the music business in California, either the rock chick or the folk poet worked. Clearly, the “Record Company Cheeses” (as she refers to them) felt that rock chick would work better. Somehow, the label did not drop her despite this initial misstep even though Amos had had a hand in writing nearly all of the sixteen tracks on the album. Y Kant Tori Read is regarded by fans who have rediscovered it as somewhat cheesy, corporate, and shallow—in other words, the antithesis of a Tori Amos album. Although hindsight can provide much insight and perspective about one’s life, Amos is especially philosophical about this time period. She told Billboard magazine in 1992, “Every place you land in life has a reason and lesson . . . I think that period of time was partially a means of dealing with sexual repression I experienced when I was growing up” (Flick 1992). Additionally, Amos says that it “took a while to recover and reintegrate” not only after the failure of Y Kant Tori Read but also the experience of producing a result other people wanted rather than something in which she deeply believed herself. In her autobiography, she writes, “By the time I ﬁnally got to make Little Earthquakes, I made a conscious decision not to be objectiﬁed here. My material had to be about the content . . . they couldn’t come between me and my piano” (Amos and Powers 2005, 74). And so, by 1990 she had started writing her haunting, confessional story-songs, visceral in their imagery and marked by the myths, stories, and legends inspired by her own family’s method of storytelling. Breaking Through: The First Few Albums The four years between the releases of Y Kant Tori Read and Little Earthquakes were well spent but difﬁcult. Amos recorded a batch of songs designed to be released following the commercial failure of Y Kant Tori Read, but those did not see the light of day—at least not in that incarnation. She went back into the studio and this time recorded with producer Eric Rosse and reworked the material. Despite the fact that her label, Atlantic, had misgivings about releasing an album of a woman playing the piano, Doug Morris, CEO of Atlantic, stuck by her and encouraged her to be herself, essentially, in her songwriting. Limited by the perspective and tired of the vibe of Los Angeles, Amos decided she needed a change of scenery. Knowing that breaking through in America would be tricky because of the large, diverse market and because her music was eclectic, Morris ingeniously decided to send Amos to England to work on the songs and perform in London in the clubs and for music critics.

9

10

Women Icons of Popular Music

It was a successful move by all accounts, and her album gained raves from top British music publications, including Q. The nineteenth-century feminist writer Virginia Woolf wrote about the need for women to ﬁnd their own space for creativity and thinking in her groundbreaking book A Room of One’s Own. Little Earthquakes, released in 1992, advocates a similar philosophy. The twelve songs are a collective clarion call for women to —drummer Matt Chamberlain heal themselves, live for themselves, claim their rights to create, and ﬁnd their own voices. But the songs are not all introspective and quiet—instead, Amos charts anger, disappointment, frustration, shame, and naked aggression with a full range of instruments at her disposal, from her signature Bösendorfer piano to electric guitars, cello, haunting vocal tracks ﬂoating behind her own, and even the suggestive crack of a whip. Some of the tracks were co-written with producer (and then-boyfriend) Eric Rosse. In “Crucify,” which leads off the album, Amos uses the chorus to suggest the idea of cruciﬁxion as a means by which women defeat their own best interests and must push past self-doubt to ﬁnd strength. “Crucify” was only the beginning of religious themes that would naturally surface in her songwriting. In the chorus of the cello-tinged “Girl,” Amos sings “she’s been everybody else’s girl/Maybe one day she’ll be her own.” No song suggests this better than “Silent All These Years,” which was one of the album’s two ofﬁcial singles. In the course of ﬁve minutes, Amos creates an evocative portrait of a narrator seeking to ﬁnd herself, ﬁnd love, and literally ﬁnd her voice: “sometimes I hear my voice and it’s been here/silent all these years.” The penultimate song, “Me and a Gun,” tells the story of rape from the point of view of a woman experiencing it. It is perhaps one of her more controversial songs, difﬁcult to listen to because of its bracing honesty and descriptive details, as the narrator invokes a prayer as her body is violated. As a ﬂash point for conversation, the song garnered much attention, possibly more than any of her other songs to date, because it was instrumental in providing an immediate emotional connection with fans who had experienced the same thing. In short, Amos gave voice to sexual assault, which enabled others to ﬁnd their own voice and speak of similar experiences. “I got a lot of letters and heard so many, many stories from fans who were going through situations of rape and abuse; everything from they were at a party and someone raped them to people being abused by someone in their home,” Amos told Billboard (1999). The experience led her to found RAINN. When it was released, the aptly named Little Earthquakes sent shockwaves throughout the music industry and garnered critical acclaim. Her success made it more likely for deejays to play two female artists in a row, a practice that before her success was more or less unheard of on commercial radio

I just find different things every time we play a song. She likes that, which is great for us. She reacts to the rhythmic choices I make as if it were a jazz gig . . . I feel completely satisfied at the end of a gig. I feel I’ve played some music.

Tori Amos

stations. Amos told Billboard magazine after the release of Little Earthquakes she considers it a “moment in time when I looked at things I hadn’t ever before. That record was like a ﬁrst kiss. It started a discovery process that never stops” (Flick 1992). From a marketing point of view, Amos boggled the minds of the industry because her music did not neatly ﬁt into one category or another. Initially Amos garnered comparisons to predecessors such as Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell, and Kate Bush. However, her reach was more diverse because her work was so different and her success on various Billboard types of charts throughout her career exempliﬁes this point. Little Earthquakes barely scratched the surface of Amos’s ultimate capability as a songwriter, but it provided good clues: simple, piano-driven songs alternating with complex, dramatic, orchestrated songs. Doug Morris told the Washington Post, “We’re stretching boundaries with her. . . . These songs are very provocative. She’s on her journey” (Harrington 1992). When it came time to promote her second album Under the Pink in 1994, label executives sent the single “God” to alternative, college, and album alternative radio format stations. The album, on the whole, is not as immediately startling as its predecessor, but it is a logical progression wherein Amos begins to dig more deeply beyond the surface of what she had begun to uncover in Little Earthquakes. The album was recorded in a hacienda in New Mexico with co-producer Eric Rosse. Still, despite its deeper digging, Amos wrote that she was still very much a fragmented woman who had not yet found a way to integrate those separated selves. She said the tour was long and “the compartmentalization process within me had gotten worse and worse” (Amos and Powers 2005, 78). She acknowledged that the fact that she was compartmentalizing herself was useful and served a purpose, to perhaps allow a singular focus on the road, but she observed it could also be destructive. Amos realized that she needed to acknowledge all the seemingly disparate parts of her personality (78). The fragmentation stemmed literally from the events in her life—the relationship between Amos and producer Eric Rosse broke up during the tour. The album’s ﬁrst single, “God,” humorously but effectively imagines the narrator as what Amos describes in Piece by Piece as “Ms. God” or “God’s lover.” With a screechy guitar, a synthetic drum beat, and other rhythmic ﬂourishes, the song possesses that telltale rolling, rhythmic structure that can be found in many of her later songs, anchored by her soulful playing. In the song, Amos asks in the verse “God sometimes you just don’t come through/Do you need a woman to look after you?” Again, the structure is atypical—Amos does not save the name of the song for the refrain—she gets right down to business from the ﬁrst word of the song in a direct address. The metaphors she was creating on Under the Pink started to become more involved, but somehow Amos was still accessible. One might consider the philosophical “Pretty Good Year” a paean to the success of her solo debut. The contemplative “Baker Baker” uses tropes of a nursery rhyme to liken a

11

12

Women Icons of Popular Music

relationship’s process to making a cake. The oddly titled “Cornﬂake Girl,” Amos has said, was inspired by an Alice Walker novel about female circumcision called Possessing the Secret of Joy. Angered by the ways in which women betray each other, she wrote the song and set up two camps— cornﬂake girl (which could be read as white) and raisin (African American) girls. In “The Waitress,” which starts off quietly but tensely, the narrator states that she wants to “kill this waitress,” only to crescendo in the chorus, with Amos practically shrieking “but I believe in peace, bitch.” Amos’s ability to quickly convey complexity—often a duality—of thought, in this case female jealousy, consistently surprises. Amos tackled another taboo, masturbation, in the tinkling, piano-based “Icicle” and linked it with religion in one swift line: “And when they say take of his body/I think I’ll take of mine instead.” Under the Pink explored what was beyond the surface, lurking underneath the exterior of things, the pinkness, the newness, and the vulnerability of the top layer of skin, for example. In its ﬁrst two weeks of release, it sold 113,000 copies; in contrast, Little Earthquakes sold 2200 copies in that same time frame, according to SoundScan. Furthermore, Amos had built a momentum with her ﬁrst record and the success of Under the Pink, which received platinum status in November 1994, undoubtedly helped Little Earthquakes’s sales, which received platinum status just two months later. Amos’s third album, Boys for Pele, feels the most impenetrable of all her releases to date; the songs are dark and often move in unexpected directions. Named for the Hawaiian ﬁre goddess (for whom a volcano is named in Hawaii), the album’s eighteen tracks comprise some of Amos’s more elaborately abstract and largely piano-based compositions. Few artists would be so bold as to put a six-minute song ﬁrst to lead off an album, but Amos did so with the spare and haunting “Horses.” She calls Boys for Pele “a woman’s journey into the hidden parts of the feminine unconscious” (Reece 1996). Fittingly, given her preoccupations and background, it was recorded in a church in Ireland. In the eyes of some critics, however, Boys for Pele further cemented her image as a strange, unpredictable musician, especially because of the artwork and photography that accompanied the release: Amos is sitting and staring straight at the camera as a pig suckles her breast. The album, regardless of its perceived impenetrability, remains a fan favorite, but it polarized critics. Boys lacks the immediacy and intimacy of her ﬁrst two releases in exchange for a more difﬁcult engagement with the issues of darkness, light, and anger she was wrestling with during the album’s creation. Adding to Boys for Pele’s thorniness, the songs take unexpected leaps and moves in subject matter, instrumentation, and the use of her voice. The percussion-heavy “Professional Widow” uses harpsichord, and the middle section suddenly stops and veers into some light, deft piano playing before returning to heaviness. In this song, Amos sings about death—the woman in

Tori Amos

the song wants to convince her man to kill himself so she does not leave any trace of guilt. Amos also began to really use her own voice as an instrument of its own merit—especially in the album’s single “Caught A Lite Sneeze,” in which she wraps her voice around syllables and a melody in the most surprising way, just a few hairs short of the tempo of the song, but never completely at odds with its rhythm. “Hey Jupiter,” situated in the middle of the album, marks a turning point for the narrator of the songs. “She knows the way she has looked at relationships with men and put them on a pedestal is over. There’s a sense of incredible loss because I knew that I would never be able to see the same way again. It’s freeing, and [yet] there’s a sense of grieving with that” (Cohen 1996). What’s interesting to note, however, is that despite any perceived impenetrability or difﬁcult or odd nature of some of the songs, the record sales did not initially indicate any dismissal by fans. In fact, Boys for Pele sold 170,000 copies in its opening week. “I didn’t change what I do. I actually took it further, and people are opening up to it,” she told Billboard after its release. The record went platinum by late August 1996, indicating that her fans were indeed open to her creative whims. Responding to Tragedy, Both Personal and Political By the time her fourth album From the Choirgirl Hotel came out in the spring of 1998, many fans probably knew that Amos was fond of calling her songs “my girls” as if they were her daughters. But there was something behind what may have appeared simply as a silly, whimsical classiﬁcation: Amos had suffered a miscarriage before she started work on this album, and most certainly felt the child was a girl. Music helped her work through her grief and pain; she says at one point in Pieces that she wanted to bring the child back. Instead, she realized she had to make the songs of Choirgirl her own; that they were her own sonic creations. It makes sense, then, that Choirgirl represented a true turning point for her as a songwriter. Amos started to tackle bigger themes because her life was presenting her with bigger challenges. Consequently, the album took on a fuller sound that was more like that of a modern rock band. The addition of drum loops and other electronic embellishments added a heaviness and new sonic textures, as did multiple and at times overlapping vocal tracks. However, singles such as “Spark,” the album’s ﬁrst track, still exude a feel that can be found in all of her successful singles—a loping, looping, rollicking sensibility and a chorus that ambles and climbs with acrobatic vocals, all of which resolves itself by the song’s end. The intimate, difﬁcult nature of some of the content of the songs, though, did yield some accessible emotional entry points for listeners. Additionally, they were more tuneful than the classically oriented compositions from Boys. On Choirgirl, too, her biting, wicked sense of humor started to emerge.

13

14

Women Icons of Popular Music

For example, she told Rolling Stone magazine, “Songs started to come, and they showed me different ways of feeling and expressing, ways that surprised me. ‘Playboy Mommy’ dealt with my feelings of rejection—‘Wasn’t I enough to be your mother, didn’t you want me? Well, don’t come, then. Go choose some little right-wing Christian for your mother.’ It’s a human response” (Daly 1998). Unfortunately, Amos would suffer through two more miscarriages in the next two years by the time she was touring in support of To Venus and Back, a double album released in September 1999. The title pays homage to Venus, the goddess of love, but (according to Amos) in a more compassionate way, as Amos says most women perceive Venus as permission to be narcissistic. Amos sought the more benevolent, healing aspects of the planet Venus’s mythical inﬂuence, responding to events in her personal life and in the music business where there was too much aggression—which she likens astrologically to Mars—especially in rap music. Despite the hardship and emotional upheaval wrought by the miscarriages, Amos said that when she was working on Choirgirl and also Venus, “I was home.” Her selves were more integrated. “If your human woman doesn’t catch up with what’s happening in the song world, then you can’t imprint this knowledge and thread it into your living tapestry” (Amos and Powers 2005, 119). With Venus, that tapestry was even more deeply embedded in electronica with some otherworldly inﬂuences, as heard in the single “Bliss,” with its rambling chorus, and the mid-tempo, keyboard-heavy song “Concertina.” However, there are moments of straightforward, piano-based narratives, such as the single “1000 Oceans.” The ﬁrst album, which she dubbed “Venus orbiting” is comprised of eleven new songs and the second, “Still orbiting,” takes its material from live performances recorded in 1998. All Music Guide called the album “her most cohesive work since Under the Pink.” Although the album eventually went platinum along with the three tracks that sold as singles, it became her ﬁrst album to not debut in the Top 10 UK chart—a signiﬁcant lapse, considering her longstanding success in that market. The single “Bliss” also garnered considerably less radio play than her previous albums and peaked at ninety-one on the Billboard Hot 100. Amos ﬁnally became pregnant successfully and decided to listen to her body and take some time off while she was pregnant with her daughter Natashya. Because she only had one album left to satisfy her contract with Atlantic, she decided to release a collection of covers of songs by male songwriters and singers, rendered from a female perspective. She called the album Strange Little Girls. It was another way she could pay homage to Venus. Notable covers included songs by Slayer, Tom Waits, The Beatles, Neil Young, Depeche Mode, and Eminem. She did not work, per se, during her pregnancy and she did not tour, but the songs she wrote for what would become 2002’s Scarlet’s Walk began to take root as she spent time in her beach house in Florida. As her ﬁrst release for Epic

Tori Amos

15

Records in 2002, the album’s eighteen songs explored Native American history and Amos’s own Eastern Cher- She’s a really, really strong okee roots. Amos cast herself as Scarlet, who journeys player. She has a really wide through the album’s stops, turns, and moments toward depth of range, just dynamibecoming, for all intents and purposes, a middle-aged cally, and she knows the woman. Scarlet’s “walk” is situated against a meander- instrument really well. . . ing map of America included in the album art. The songs with Tori, it’s as if she’s “A Sorta Fairytale,” “Crazy,” “Your Cloud,” “Indian made for the instrument in a Summer,” and “Wampum Prayer” all concern the rever- certain sort of way. There’s ence for the earth that she was taught as a child. “I some sort of spatial relationwanted to communicate that your relationship to ship between her brain and your nation, and to the earth, is very personal,” and that this relationship is something that people must her body and the piano— claim for themselves. “The land has a spirit and she is everything’s always right there. She rarely makes a mistake, alive,” said Amos (Amos and Powers 2005, 218). Something oddly prescient happened during the writ- even when she’s doing someing of this particular album. Although Amos wrote the thing that’s not rehearsed or song “I Can’t See New York” in May 2001, by the time if she’s improvising. —Jon Evans, bassist the album was released in 2002 in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in New York City on September 11, 2001, most listeners couldn’t help but imbue it with a different meaning. The album also felt more political than previous material, as Amos was responding to America’s military involvement in Afghanistan and the second Gulf War. In “Amber Waves,” inspired by the name of actress Julianne Moore’s character in the ﬁlm Boogie Nights, Amos visits a friend who is an aging, fading porn star by the same name. But Amos also acknowledges that America, as an idea, has been “pimped out,” bought and sold and marketed as a commodity. In some ways, the album can be read as a gentle critique, an affectionate warning, to Americans: If we do not preserve and revere our own land, it will be taken away from us. Although some critics thought Scarlet’s Walk was an all-too-easy rock formula—the concept album—many agreed that it marked a strong return to her previous form. The album, as a whole, for all its extensive metaphorical underpinnings, showed a warmth, cohesion, and groundedness that many fans welcomed. It peaked at number seven on the Billboard Top 200 Album chart, and the same position for Billboard’s Top Internet albums; it also is the only of her albums, thus far, that has stalled before reaching gold status. While writing the songs for 2005’s The Beekeeper, Amos kept in mind ideas of pollination, of the various sides and components that create the shape and substance of a honeycomb. “I’ve been walking through many different types of gardens. The songs were trying to show me they formed a shape and were independent but connected to each other, no different from the structure of hexagonal cells that make up the beehive,” she wrote (Amos and Powers 2005, 78).

16

Women Icons of Popular Music

Much as Amos was able to use this metaphor to unite and celebrate the various components—or sides—of her own persona, the album also deals with loss—speciﬁcally, the loss of her brother in a tragic car accident prior to its release. The title track addresses it. “It was originally written about my mother— she was critical, and she ﬂat-lined and came back. That’s the last time I saw my brother,” she told Rolling Stone in an online exclusive story. The album’s sad and poignant capper, “Toast,” was written on the airplane on the way home from her brother’s funeral. Overall, like Scarlet’s Walk, The Beekeeper was another overly long (nineteen tracks), loosely autobiographical song-cycle, situated this time in different gardens all tended to by the album’s beekeeper protagonist. Musically The Beekeeper introduces the Hammond B3 and other organs, which allowed Amos to further expand her songwriting capabilities and imbue her music with a newfound soulfulness and at times, a bit of funkiness. The album debuted on the Billboard chart at number ﬁve, selling 83,000 units in the ﬁrst week. Billboard called it “some of the most accessible music of her career, coupled with beautifully obscure lyrics” (2005). At press time, however, the album had not yet reached Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certiﬁcation; it has sold about 350,000 copies in the United States. The album is not completely about loss. Although admittedly inspired by her new B3 organ (she calls it “Big Momma”) and her relationship with another B3 that she views as a male organ, she wrote “Sweet the Sting” to some degree about “the marriage of the sacred and the profane” and the balancing of the masculine and feminine elements in her own songwriting. This merging of sacred and profane, however, is Amos’s lifelong mission as a songwriter: to unite sexuality and spirituality and ﬁght the dichotomy that American popular culture establishes for young women. On her 2007 release American Doll Posse, Amos took the idea of image formation even further. Over the course of twenty-three songs, she sings from the perspective of women whose personalities relate somehow to Greek and Roman female archetypes. As a concept, it’s probably the most risky, intellectual, and “out there” album she has yet to release. In 2007, Jenny Eliscu in Rolling Stone paid Amos a bit of a left-handed compliment and said that “there’s way too much conceptual malarkey surrounding the songs, but if you can ignore her fake posse, you’ll ﬁnd this is Amos’s best album in many years.” Nevertheless, fans are still with her: It became a number ﬁve seller on the Billboard 200 album charts and fared the same for the Internet album charts.

MISSION, MOTIVATION, PROCESS From the very start of her songwriting career, Amos, like many artists, wrestled with the demons, unanswered questions, and inconsistencies she experienced growing up. When she does not know the answer to something, Amos is likely to turn to books for the answer. Amos travels with a library on the

Tori Amos

tour bus, an extensive collection of books, newspapers, magazines—anything that shows potential to become fodder for songwriting or general contemplation. When Amos released her ﬁrst greatest hits album, it was not too surprising that she called it Tales of a Librarian. As for cataloging her songwriting process, inspiration, and ideas, Amos keeps a ﬁle—literally or ﬁguratively—of what she calls her “song motifs,” which consist of anything from a line or a lyric to a full-ﬂedged melody. She is painstaking but somewhat disorganized about it and keeps a recorder next to her Bösendorfer piano at her home. She keeps tapes stacked up but not in any particular order—she knows where to ﬁnd what she needs. When she sits down to write, she has already gathered hundreds of notes, snatches of conversations, ideas, words, and phrases. Amos can sit for hours doing this sort of work, but it’s no guarantee that the result is useful. Still, she has faith that although a good idea will stick with her, it may not always reemerge when she’s seeking it. She admitted that sometimes songs do just come through but also “. . . if I don’t go through this painstaking cataloging process, then these pieces of music are just ideas that never become tangible” (Amos and Powers 2005, 110). Sometimes a motif will emerge. Her husband Mark Hawley said that he has seen her write songs in a few minutes, such as “Marianne” from Boys for Pele, but it is not the usual procedure. He says that Amos works painstakingly hard on all aspects of her songwriting, regardless of whether it is one lyric line or an entire section of a song. Inspiration can strike at any moment, and she believes “verses are setups; choruses are payoffs. They need to be. Music and words often come together when a song Being initially shows herself to me. I don’t always get the full story” (115). Showing her keen grasp of and love for metaphor, Amos likened the structure of a song to the structure of a house. “Sometimes you want the chorus to be the kitchen in a song. Sometimes you want the chorus to be the shower, very cleansing. Sometimes it is in the bedroom” (106–107). Regarding the songwriting process, she said, “I believe that the songs choose you, but you have to be willing to develop and stretch as a player, or your repertoire is only going to be of a certain type.” Certainly this is something she has managed to steer clear of: learning to play various types of the organ has expanded her songwriting and essentially changed her music. But she returns to the metaphor of architecture—of a blueprint, of a building. “Imagine that you have been able to let yourself into this fascinating architectural space but you are in only one room and you do not know how to get to the other rooms because as of now there are no doorways. It becomes like a sonic puzzle” (117). Themes: Goddesses, Myths, Archetypes, and Religion Traveling with the extensive library allows Amos to dip into various subjects and areas of interest, whether it’s Jungian archetypes, religious ﬁgures, feminism,

17

18

Women Icons of Popular Music

or mythology. Most of what she writes is ﬁltered through this self-conscious reservoir of information, and she believes she is “in service” to these myths and ideas. This deep understanding of myths and archetypes allows Amos to explore how they surface in her own life and in her songwriting. One of Amos’s longstanding archetypes of exploration is Mary Magdalene. She tells of a formative experience that occurred when she was just eight years old, sitting at the Sunday dinner table with her family and some bishops from the Methodist church. The bishops were using a metaphor to describe Jesus’s relationship to the church and its followers. The bishop likened Jesus to a bridegroom and the Christian church to his bride. Bravely, but politely, Amos asked about Mary Magdalene. The question raised a few eyebrows and prompted a discussion at the table among the bishops and her father about how Mary Magdalene was a fallen woman whom Jesus saved and blessed. Amos realized that organized religion had downplayed Mary Magdalene’s role. The conversation stayed with her, and as she began to play music and develop into a songwriter, more scholarly and literary works were published that explored the controversial idea (among religious scholars and believers) that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married. It is also debated that she is an uncredited apostle whose teachings and writings were suppressed and subsequently forgotten during the choosing of the gospels—and for much of recent history. But that is not entirely the point—it is not important that Amos believes in what some might consider an historical footnote at best. She was able to see a parallel between the way in which Mary Magdalene had not only been ostracized and eliminated from history by the church, but the way in which women in general—and speciﬁcally in Amos’s own line of work—were silenced and marginalized. She began to see the inﬂexible thinking that is common in established institutions—religion and capitalism speciﬁcally—and started to explore the idea of how a woman could be both sensual and spiritual. These questions stay with her and form much of the impetus of her songwriting. How can a woman be whole if she does not and cannot acknowledge both of these sides of her humanity? Amos believes that the piano enables her to resolve and unite those issues. From the beginning of her solo career, Amos started exploring what she calls the archetypes of the two Marys—Mary, the virgin mother of Jesus, and Mary Magdalene. Feminist scholars refer to this dichotomy of culturally constructed roles for women as the virgin/whore complex—a woman is exclusively one or the other and cannot contain elements of both. Amos also refers to this process as integrating the sacred and profane. She describes the song “God” as a turning point, because it enabled her to unite those seemingly disparate parts of her being. Other songs later in her career, such as “Marys of the Sea,” reprise this attempt for reconciliation as well. In the aforementioned song “Amber Waves” from Scarlet’s Walk, the narrator watches Amber retain her dignity and sense of self in the midst of her own demise. As Amos has commented, “the Magdalene and America are really good synonyms

Tori Amos

because they’ve both been pimped out, though they always resurface” (Amos and Powers 2005, 99). By the time she was set to write Boys for Pele, Amos was in the thick of researching archetypes. The self-fragmentation process she describes coming out of Under the Pink was fully explored when she went to Hawaii and took a spiritual journey with a female guru who was able to break a person down into his or her very essence. Amos needed to come to terms with her own anger—her own darkness, so to speak—and so she set out exploring the Dark Prince archetype, the one who can bring light in the darkness. Consequently, Boys is probably her darkest, most difﬁcult listen. What is perhaps most controversial—or intriguing, depending on your perspective—is how all this research inspires and surfaces in her songwriting. With such heady, obscure references and metaphorically heavy songs, it is understandable that she would be misunderstood at times. Although Amos does not let anyone else dictate what she should do with her songwriting and her career, she does want to be understood. She has even joked about this, saying “I know I sound like The Little Mermaid on acid. People have had a really hard time, because they think you cannot be a really strong woman and sound like I do. I just refuse to buy anybody’s projections of what my instruments are, what the sound of my voice is, what my songs are” (Reece 1996). Of course, people will make snap judgments, but her fans (and most thoughtful music journalists) have enough working knowledge of how her songs are put together that there is an implicit understanding; fans are willing to go on the ride that each Tori Amos song provides.

LEGACY AND OTHER INTERESTS By the late 1990s, many of the major labels had merged and consolidated, leaving many critically acclaimed but underselling artists homeless. Although Amos generally enjoyed an amicable relationship with Atlantic until the end of her run with them, the music business is a ﬁckle beast. After the departure of executive Polly Anthony from Epic Records in September 2003, Amos left the label and formed a partnership with industry veterans John Witherspoon, who has worked with Amos for over a decade, and Chelsea Laird, who had served as tour manager for a few years, to launch the Bridge Entertainment Group. Their mission was to aid artists who were in transition—between labels or management companies or who were putting their efforts toward touring and reaching the media. With this focus on aiding artists who were without management, Amos was the new venture’s ﬁrst client. According to Bridge’s Web site, Amos cites the “shocking” exit of Epic Records president Polly Anthony as the catalyst for starting the new company. “Polly was one of the main reasons why I signed with the label,” Amos said in a Web posting. But the music business was changing; labels were “letting a lot of ideas people go, and for a lot of

19

20

Women Icons of Popular Music

artists that are dependent on these people, they don’t know where to turn,” Amos told Billboard. That’s how Bridge was born. Bridge Entertainment Group’s ﬁrst release was Amos’s greatest hits collection Tales of a Librarian. To say that the Internet has simply changed the way musicians can market and distribute their materials—and connect with fans—would be an understatement. With the advent of the iTunes software in early 2001, which enables users to download music either by the album or by the song, Amos, like many artists with a backlog of interesting material, released an iTunes-exclusive mini-album called Tori Amos Live Session in 2005, with four songs. The Internet has also made it much easier to ﬁnd singles, which were often packed with special bonus material. It has served as a way for the prolific Amos to share music that might not otherwise get released—such as the haunting cover of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”—and give the fans something special. These EP-like singles have become collector’s items, the songs (such as “Take to the Sky,” which initially appeared on Y Kant Tori Read) now part of her regular touring repertoire. Additionally, in 2005, Sony released a handful of live albums, available individually through iTunes or as a set through retail outlets. Each album was recorded in one city, such as Boston, Chicago, Denver, and Los Angeles in the United States and Manchester and London in England. Fans rejoiced and hailed it as a long overdue move by her record label. Amos’s legacy as an unconventional artist has shown that it is possible to be thoughtful and complex and still reach a broad and engaged audience that remains devoted and curious as to what she might come up with next. Her strength and uncompromising approach to songwriting inspired untold numbers of women to ﬁnd their own voices, too. In establishing the organization RAINN, Amos parlayed her experiences and her own growing musical proﬁle to provide women in difﬁcult times of abuse with resources they need. She has spoken from both her imagination and her life in her songwriting, which has cemented her status as an icon.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Little Earthquakes. Atlantic, 1992 Under the Pink. Atlantic, 1994 Boys for Pele. Atlantic, 1996 From the Choirgirl Hotel. Atlantic, 1998

FURTHER READING Amos, Tori, and Ann Powers. Tori Amos: Piece By Piece: A Portrait of the Artist, Her Thoughts, Her Conversations. New York: Broadway Books, 2005.

Tori Amos

Bell, Carrie. “Artist-Founded Agency Offers Support to Rape Victims.” Billboard (August 14, 1999). Billboard. “Album Reviews.” (February 22, 2005). Bridge Entertainment Group. See www.tbentgroup.com. Cohen, Howard. “Tori-Speak Makes Sense, If You Listen Awhile.” Miami Herald (April 12, 1996). Dalphonse, Sherri. “The Virtues of Tori Amos.” Washington Magazine (February 1994). Daly, Steven. “Her Secret Garden.” Rolling Stone 789 (June 25, 1998). Eliscu, Jenny. “American Doll Posse.” Rolling Stone online (May 3, 2007). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/14300667/review/14459317/ american_doll_posse. Flick, Larry. “Tori Amos Shares Life Lessons.” Billboard (March 28, 1992). Flick, Larry. “Label Tickled ‘Pink’ Over New Tori Amos Set.” Billboard (December 4, 1993). Harrington, Richard. “Finally, a Prodigy Finds Her Song: Tori Amos, Back Home With a Haunting Album.” Washington Post (March 22, 1992). Harrington, Richard. “Tori Amos, In the Pink: Singer Moves Beyond the Horrors of Her Past to Stardom.” Washington Post (June 20, 1994). Morris, Chris. “ ‘O’-for-1: Omarion Along at Top.” Hollywood Reporter (March 3, 2005). Newman, Melinda. “The Beat: Amos Builds a Bridge for Artists.” Billboard (October 25, 2003). Reece, Douglas. “International Fan Base Propelling Tori Amos’ Atlantic Set.” Billboard (February 17, 1996). Robertson, Jessica. “Q&A: Tori Amos Talks in Tongues.” Rolling Stone online (March 30, 2006). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/toriamos/articles/ story/9549653/qa_tori_amos_talks_in_tongues.

21

Courtesy of Photofest

Joan Baez

24

Women Icons of Popular Music

OVERVIEW It is not easy to categorize Joan Baez as just a singer/songwriter or an interpreter, because she has done both throughout her nearly ﬁfty-year career. She is well known outside the music industry for many things—her activism, her relationship with Bob Dylan in the 1960s, and her beautiful voice. To some extent, Joan Baez is perhaps better known for her political activism and efforts to raise awareness on a number of issues from immigration to human rights and, most notably, the peace movement; Baez has advocated for nonviolent resolution to political and social problems. Baez’s career has ebbed and ﬂowed over the years. Marked by a strong debut at the dawn of the 1960s and a period of intense activity during the ensuing two decades, Baez’s career slipped into relative obscurity in the 1980s as the tenor of the music business shifted and artists with personal and political messages fell out of favor. However, that would change somewhat in the early 1990s when the singer/songwriter movement emerged. Artists such as Sinead O’Connor, Tracy Chapman, Michelle Shocked, and Suzanne Vega and the band 10,000 Maniacs brought social, humanitarian, and political concerns into their songwriting and gained fans and critical acclaim doing so. These artists owed no small debt to Baez. Unlike many of those folksingers, however, Baez started out interpreting the classic works of others, so much so that All Music Guide calls her “the most accomplished interpretive folksinger of the 1960s.” Music journalist Kurt Loder said “Baez explicitly combined the qualities of folkie purism and social virtuousness. She was an inspiration to a generation of young women who grew their hair long and free and parted it in the middle” (Holt 1989, 83). Baez’s career has also been inextricably linked with that of folk-rock musician Bob Dylan, whose iconic, long-term success and relevance some might argue surpasses her own. However, she was an early supporter of his thenunique folk-rock style. Together, the two have collaborated on projects and extensively performed and written songs. Their difﬁcult relationship and intriguing dynamic is most vividly captured on the D.A. Pennebaker documentary ﬁlm Don’t Look Back (1967) and in her own music on the 1975 album Diamonds & Rust. During the 1960s through the mid-1970s, Baez was arguably at her most proliﬁc and produced her most noteworthy albums; from 1959 until 1979, Baez released nearly an album a year and made appearances on numerous others. She has appeared on more than two dozen recordings with or by other artists, most consistently those of Bob Dylan. Her material in the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s is not nearly as critically well regarded as her earlier work, partially due to a change in her voice—it got lower. Perhaps more important, the musical climate during the late 1980s and early to mid-1990s, despite the success of artists such as Tracy Chapman and Suzanne Vega, did not overwhelmingly embrace female artists who wrote didactic, politically

Joan Baez

charged songs. Consequently, Baez did not sell records in signiﬁcant numbers through this transitional period. Her Billboard charting history illustrates this: From 1962 through 1979, Baez’s albums appeared almost annually on the Billboard top albums charts (the chart system then was not nearly as complex and fractionalized as it is now). Despite her output through the 1980s, after 1979’s Honest Lullaby, Baez experienced a nearly twenty-ﬁve-year absence on the Billboard charts. Her work did not appear there again until 2003’s Dark Chords on a Big Guitar, which peaked at thirty-nine on the Billboard Top Independent Albums chart. With over several dozen records released to date, starting from her self-titled debut in 1960 through 2005’s Bowery Songs (live), Baez’s albums, surprisingly, have never reached platinum status. A mere seven of them have achieved gold status, including Joan Baez, Volume 2, Joan Baez in Concert, Joan Baez, Blessed Are . . . , Any Day Now, Diamonds & Rust, and the single “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” In 2007, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences, the organization that awards the Grammys. Baez never received a Grammy Award for a speciﬁc recording despite the nearly ﬁfty years that she has been active in the music business. Baez’s trajectory as an artist is typical of many from her generation who came of age and started writing music during the politically tumultuous 1960s. Like an artist who starts as a voice for the counterculture and then gradually reaches a wider mass audience, Baez experienced some growing pains and critical resistance. Through the years, critics noted that Baez’s voice was starting to sound different—her range had decreased—a fact that may explain some but not all of her audience erosion. Still, for someone who makes a living using her voice it is not unusual to have to adjust one’s material accordingly. Baez calls her singing voice her “greatest gift,” and that voice shaped her life.

EARLY YEARS Baez is the product of middle-class Quaker upbringing. Her physicist father, Alberto Vinicio Baez, also worked as a UNESCO consultant and is author of a textbook called The Spiral Approach to Physics. Born in Staten Island, New York, Baez is the second of three daughters, in between older sister Pauline and younger sister (and longtime activist) Mimi. Although her father was certainly skilled and talented enough to work for the government, he instead went into higher education. The family traveled a lot because of his work, and as a child Baez spent time in Paris, Baghdad, Bangkok, and Switzerland. When she was in ﬁfth grade the family moved to southern California. Baez is named after her mother, Joan Bridge Baez, who was born in Scotland and moved to the United States when she was just two years old. Bridge Baez’s own mother died when she was three.

25

26

Women Icons of Popular Music

One formative experience Baez describes, acknowledging her mother’s intelligence at raising girls in foreign places, took place when they were living in Baghdad, Iraq. The Baez sisters were getting into a lot of trouble, Joan especially, and for about a year her mother kept her out of school. She learned and explored on her own, made cakes, dug around and looked for ants and watched their behavior. Baez realized that that year of freedom contributed to her creativity and acknowledged her mother for giving that chance to her. By Joan’s accounts, their relationship was close, supportive, and warm. Later, her mother even went to jail with Joan for civil disobedience. In a Quaker house, silence, meditation, and introspection are all essential components of the religion. By the time Baez had reached junior high, she had grown accustomed to being teased for her dark skin and her Mexican background (on her father’s side). The experience of living with her own ethnic difference undoubtedly gave her sympathy and compassion for others who were different or somehow socially awkward. In her 1968 memoir Daybreak, she reﬂects on her upbringing and her time spent in foreign countries and tells stories of looking after neighborhood animals that had been neglected, injured, or abused. As a child, she describes herself as sad and skinny and eager for friends. Around eighth grade, she was so depressed that she related an occasion where she had not eaten anything for three days and expressed selfconsciousness about the dark rings under her eyes, her skinniness, and her pimples. She went to see the Baez family doctor, who told her she was beautiful and gave her a milkshake and a hamburger. At this point, the Baez family was back in southern California. This undercurrent of sadness and melancholy would remain with her in varying degrees throughout her life, although somehow it never interfered with or detracted from her idealism and activism. Her Quaker background helped develop her steadfast dedication to paciﬁsm and nonviolence. By the time Baez was a teenager in high school, she had already become inﬂuenced by the writing of Mahatma Gandhi. Baez started practicing civil disobedience as a teenager, so by the time she became a recorded musician it was a natural activity. For instance, when she was in high school in Palo Alto, California (the family had moved again), she protested an air raid drill the school had scheduled after she had done some reading in her father’s books that basically proved that there was not enough time to walk home and go into the cellar—a common activity during an air raid drill. Instead, she stayed in her seat (Ingram 1991, 55). In the 1950s, the Baez family moved to Boston so Alberto could teach at MIT, and Baez enrolled at Boston University to study theater. “I don’t know why I went in the theater school, because I hated every second of it. After a while, I just dropped out, ﬂunked everything.” However, the time in Boston was well spent, because the scene there exposed her to the possibilities and provided her with a place to play. “I was really drawn into the whole scene of coffee shops and singing and the early English folk songs” and said she was “very stuffy” about her choice of music (Holt 1989, 86). Around this time she

Joan Baez

was listening to Odetta, Harry Belafonte, and other lesser-known folk artists such as Joe Mapes, Cynthia Gooding, and John Jacob Niles. Inspired by a visit to one of these coffee shops, Tulla’s Coffee Grinder, with her father, Baez started playing guitar. Another establishment in town, Club 47, was primarily a jazz joint but Tuesdays were free, so the women who ran it offered Baez the opportunity to play for ten dollars (Holt 1989, 86). She says there were fewer than ten people there, but word of mouth was good. Despite the fact that Baez forgot the words in the middle of a song, a crowd began to form week after week to hear her play. Baez made her noteworthy public debut at the ﬁrst Newport Folk Festival in 1959, which was created as an offshoot of the then six-year-old Newport Jazz Festival, held in Newport, Rhode Island every summer. Also appearing at the folk festival were Pete Seeger, Odetta, the New Lost City Ramblers, Kingston Trio, Bob Gibson, and Earl Scruggs. Writing in the New York Times about her performance, Robert Shelton said her “fervid, lush soprano voice was impressive” (Shelton 1959). Gibson personally invited her to Newport to perform “Virgin Mary Had One Son” and “Jordan River” with him because she was not well known enough to have merited an invitation under her own steam. When she started making subsequent public appearances, writers such as Shelton called her a “folk revivalist,” in reference to earlier protest songwriters such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. He wrote of a performance of hers at the 92nd Street YMCA in New York City that illustrated the contrast between Baez and many other folk singers of the day—she possessed a cool stage manner and delivery that permitted her poetic lyrics and pretty melodies to stand out, and he continued to predict that she faced a bright future (Shelton 1960). She appeared at the 1960 Newport Folk Festival, and at that point she had been signed by Vanguard Records. She recorded her ﬁrst album in four nights in a stinky hotel ballroom on Broadway, with just two microphones: one for the voice and one for the guitar. At the time, it was common to record quickly and efﬁciently and live, without too much fuss. The sonic trappings of a recording studio would not make much sense on the debut record of a folk artist. More accolades came on the release of her self-titled debut Joan Baez in 1960, when she was just twenty years old. The New York Times loved her, with critic Robert Shelton commending her tone as especially noteworthy because she had not had any vocal training, but he said that it was a “clearas-glass sound, sometime shimmering with a glint of reﬂected sunlight, then darkening a bit with a passing lowering cloud” (Shelton 1961). She had indeed made her mark on folk music, but she had yet to really establish herself among a ﬁeld of other female folk artists such as Odetta, Mary O’Hara, Jeannie Robertson, Judy Collins, and Isla Cameron. He did offer some critique for her stage presence, saying that she seemed to slip away from her audience and into something resembling a trance with her music. Periodically, this criticism would surface throughout her career, but as she got older she turned to storytelling in between songs and that would bring the audience back.

27

28

Women Icons of Popular Music

But early success took its toll, like it often does on younger artists. Somehow, she was compared to the image of the Virgin Mary. “I thought that was a terriﬁc idea. In fact, I was sure I was, and I felt very benign and wonderful. Because up until then, the only image I had of myself was of a dumb Mexican” (Holt 1989, 87). The political consciousness would come slowly, through the years. At the time, though, it is fair to say that Baez knew there was something she wanted to say, but she was not quite sure yet what it was. “I hadn’t really emerged. I think I was probably known for some civil rights work at the time, but it wasn’t clear to anybody—and it wasn’t clear to me—what I was doing” (Holt 1989, 87).

CAREER PATH Political Consciousness and the Folksinger: The 1960s The tumultuous 1960s were really Baez’s formative years. One might argue that if she had not come of age during this time period, she may never have recorded music quite in the same way she did, which just happened to be a way that made her famous. And one might argue that if she had never met Bob Dylan, she would not be nearly as well known for politically active songwriting and nonviolent activism as she currently is. Indeed, some twenty years after her arrival on the scene it is said that one of her most important contributions to the “folk” public included making accessible the traditional English ballads and the difﬁcult early ballads of the unknown Bob Dylan. After her debut album, which was made up of thirteen traditional songs, some of them children’s ballads, she did not waste much time putting together live albums and studio releases. Shortly after Joan Baez, which sold modestly, Joan Baez, Volume 2 came out in September 1961, which helped sell even more copies of her debut. This was followed by Joan Baez in Concert in September 1962. Although it is not easy to ﬁnd response to Baez’s work from that time—the convention of music criticism would not fully emerge until later in that decade with the launch of Rolling Stone magazine—commercial response does indicate some degree of cultural resonance, as all three of these albums went gold and remained on the charts for more than two years (Eder). Time magazine described her in a June 1962 article called “The Folk Girls” as possessing “an impeccable sense of dynamics and phrasing, and an uncanny ability to dream her way into the emotional heart of a song.” Time reported that Baez was committed to the cause of folk music despite her growing, early success, saying, “she turned down $100,000 worth of concert dates in a single year.” At the time, she was only touring on college campuses and for only a few months per year, but she also played at Carnegie Hall at the tender age of twenty-three. In 1963, at the age of twenty-two, Baez met then-unknown folk singer Bob Dylan and began having an affair with him. She brought him onstage with

Joan Baez

29

her, and by 1964 the pair were performing together. She credits his song “The Death of Emmitt Till” as Folk music depends on intent. the catalyst that turned her into a political folk singer If someone desires to make (Perry 2002). In retrospect, their relationship seems money, I don’t call it folk natural, inevitable even, given their interests and abil- music. ities. Their process felt symbiotic. Baez said that in the summer of 1962 “[h]e was turning out songs like ticker tape and I was stealing them as fast as he wrote them” (Goldsmith 1982). There is much debate among critics about the degree to which Dylan was genuinely motivated and engaged with the antiwar protest and how “political” his songs really are. Furthermore, many feminist music critics contend that Baez opened his eyes to nonviolence and humanitarian issues. Starting in 1963, Baez refused to pay sixty percent of her income taxes to the government, claiming that it would have gone to “armaments” for the Vietnam War. Although the IRS ultimately got the money it was owed by putting a lien on her house, her car, and her land, she continued to do this for several years in the 1960s while the war was still going on. Regardless of what was happening with her personal life, however, the song and the movement were inextricable and no one could deny her passion and commitment. In an article in the New York Times in 1980, Neil Alan Marks wrote an assessment of folk music, claiming that there was a resurgence. The article highlighted many important musical contributors to this genre and suggested that Baez’s approach was “the acting out of folksong. One sensed her becoming the characters she sang about. As she presented a sensual (and much imitated) physical image, she also possessed what was, for the genre, a ﬂawless soprano.” Marks went on to declare that her self-titled debut held up through the years—he said it was “still lovely” and that her Joan Baez in Concert (1962) and Farewell Angelina (1965) releases were evidence that she had “reached artistic peaks.” Critics agreed, saying that the latter release showed she was starting to beef up her mostly acoustic approach by adding other instruments and her voice, no doubt an inﬂuence of her relationship with Bob Dylan—who by 1965 had started to show signs of turning into the folk-rock artist he would ultimately become. Much of Angelina features songs he wrote, such as the title track (which he himself never ofﬁcially recorded) along with “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” and “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue.” As the 1960s progressed, Dylan became less of a factor in her songwriting and her music, and they gradually grew apart. She released a Christmas album called Noel in 1966 with Peter Schickele as arranger/conductor, and in 1967 worked with him again on an ornate album simply titled Joan, that was trying to come to terms with the change in the music world by integrating pop, rock, and folk. All Music Guide’s Bruce Eder calls it “the most self-consciously beautiful record Baez ever cut,” most likely because Schickele added some lovely but sedate orchestral arrangements on ten of the album’s twelve songs.

30

Women Icons of Popular Music

Baez pulled from John Lennon and Paul McCartney but also Paul Simon, Jacques Brel, and her late brother-inlaw Richard Farina. Two of her own compositions include “North” and “Saigon Bride,” the latter of which is, unsurprisingly, an anti–Vietnam War song. Like many musicians of the 1960s, opposition to the Vietnam War gave her a cause to rally against, but for Baez it was pivotal, turning her toward the nonviolence movement so singularly that it would deﬁne the rest of her activism throughout her life. By 1967, Baez was picketing outside draft boards in San Francisco, an act that got her arrested and charged with disturbing the peace, failure to disperse, and trespassing. Her future husband, David Harris, spoke at the event; he was identiﬁed as the former head of the Stanford University student body and a leader of the group called “The Resistance” (Turner 1967). During her ten-day sentence in jail she met Harris and they fell in love.

This country has gone mad. But I will not go mad with it. I will not pay for organized murder. I will not pay for the war in Vietnam.

The 1970s: Marriage, Protest, and Experimenting with New Sounds Her marriage to antiwar protest leader David Harris in 1968 resulted in a few albums that were tinged with country sounds (Harris was a fan of country music) such as David’s Album in 1969 and One Day at a Time in 1970. Cementing her position as a skilled interpreter of other people’s music, the double album Blessed Are . . . went gold and featured a Top 10 hit, a cover of The Band’s classic “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” James Coyne made a documentary ﬁlm in black and white about Baez and her husband Harris called Carry It On. Baez released an album by the same name as a soundtrack to the ﬁlm (Eder). The marriage did not last long, however. In December 1969 Baez gave birth to a son, Gabriel. Starting in mid1969, Harris served a jail sentence for draft dodging and was released in 1971; she wrote “A Song for David,” and “Fifteen Months,” among others, during his incarceration. By January 1972 the pair had separated, and as of August of 1973 they ofﬁcially divorced after ﬁve years of marriage. At the time, Harris explained to his friends (as told by Time magazine), “Living together is getting in the way of our relationship.” And Baez agreed. “We’re continuing to work together, and our son Gabriel is thriving, and that’s all that matters anyway” (Time 1972). Later, in his autobiography, Harris suggested that the marriage was a product of the times. Baez has remained a single parent since then, and in 1973 she told the press she was bisexual. She switched labels to A&M Records for the 1972 album Come From the Shadows, which bore more of a pop music inﬂuence than folk music. By the turn of the decade, starting with the 1970 release of One Day at a Time, rather than strictly working as an interpreter and collaborator Baez started to write her own material. The best example of those efforts is her landmark

Joan Baez

album Diamonds & Rust (1975), which also marked her best chart position, just missing the Top 10 and peaking at number eleven in 1975. The album also achieved gold selling status. Although it had covers of songs written by Stevie Wonder, John Prine, Jackson Browne, and the Allman Brothers Band, the album also featured many of tracks written by Baez herself. In Rolling Stone, Kurt Loder calls Diamonds & Rust “the celebrated ode to Bobby,” meaning her defunct relationship with Bob Dylan. Much of her songwriting bears the inﬂuence of her time with him, both musically and lyrically, but none more so than the title track, “Diamonds & Rust,” which has a meandering, repetitive melody with verses that merely mention the title of the song and that does not have a clear-cut chorus. The song reveals pieces of a relationship vis-à-vis a phone call. In the opening line, she sings, “Well I’ll be damned/Here comes your ghost again.” She continues the straightforward reminiscence with affection and leads up to what should be the payoff of the chorus but instead, a solemn revelation: “We both know what memories can bring/They bring diamonds and rust.” Later in the album, Baez covers The Band’s song “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” Baez sings of herself in third person in “Winds of the Old Days,” and she forgives Dylan for abandoning the protest movement and says goodbye, at least in song, to the days of the 1960s. The success of that album was followed an album full of all-Baez compositions, Gulf Winds (1976). The ensuing years were marked by label changes; Blowin’ Away was released by CBS Records’ Portrait Label in June 1977, as was Honest Lullaby (1979). She left CBS and released European Tour (1980) in Europe on the Portrait label but not in the United States. Although during 1979 Baez toured in support of Honest Lullaby in twenty-two cities, her activist efforts were starting to occupy more of her time than her songwriting. But with such shufﬂing around from label to label, it was not clear what kind of audience was still left for aging folksingers who were trying to ﬁnd their place in a post–Vietnam War era. The Washington Post called Honest Lullaby “disturbingly ambivalent, torn between the artist’s personal past and her political present. . . The arrangements are simple, clean and clearly tailored to serve as a backdrop” (Joyce 1979). Baez took part in writing four of the ten tracks, and Joyce says that her “congested wordplay” is on display on the title track and on “Michael,” but he credits her own composition “For Sasha” and her take on the reggae classic “No Woman, No Cry.” In general, however, he argued that the release showed that Baez felt safe drawing from the “wellspring of traditional ballads and spirituals” (Joyce 1979). The late 1970s were not an easy time for Baez, personally or professionally, but they were only a warning of the transition she would ﬁnd herself facing in the ensuing years, in the wake of the Vietnam War, the dissolution of her marriage, the splintering of the antiwar movement, and a sense of homelessness in terms of her musical career, as she moved from label to label (Darling 1969).

31

32

Women Icons of Popular Music

Despite the unsettled nature of her personal life and her musical career and her disappointment that the movement’s efforts that the end of the Vietnam War did not mean the end of violence, Baez continued her activism. She told the Washington Post in mid-1979, “I wasn’t disillusioned. I’ve always saved disillusionment and depression for my personal life” (Darling 1979). In 1979, Baez’s attention turned more consistently to nonviolence and forming her own organization, called Humanitas International. Baez started Humanitas, along with six activist women friends, not only as a way to address human rights issues around the world that other organizations could not handle but also because she was motivated to do her own thing. “Instead of helping other people out with theirs, I wanted to be able to deﬁne what I did.” The work comes at the expense of any political orientation. “[O]ur whole emphasis at Humanitas is to drop ideology and learn to see repression for what it is. A rubber-hose beating is a rubber-hose beating, whether it’s administered in South Africa or Latin America or Siberia” (Holt 1989, 88). By mid-1979, Baez had her issue—the Vietnamese government’s oppressive and cruel treatment of its own political prisoners. Certainly Baez had not remained silent on the issue of the Vietnam War and visited Hanoi in the early 1970s, but her position surprised many in the antiwar movement for its bold attack on a Communist government. She wrote an open letter to Vietnam’s leaders, which was published in a handful of newspapers and signed by Lily Tomlin, Norman Lear, James Michener, Cesar Chavez, and Nat Hentoff— none of them strangers to protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s (Graustark 1979). This act alienated her from other activists regarding the Vietnam War, including Jane Fonda, Daniel Ellsberg, Tom Hayden, and others (Graustark 1979). Baez was beginning to carve out her own niche and display that she said what she meant and she meant what she said, that torture is torture regardless of ideology. Her efforts did not always make her popular. On tour in support of Honest Lullaby in Seattle, for example, she was taunted by crowds with chants of “The CIA Loves Joan Baez” and “Don’t Swallow Joanie’s Baloney” (Beck, Reese, and Kasindorf 1979). Alternately, Baez spent time touring Southeast Asia’s refugee camps, singing at fundraisers in Washington, DC, and appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, describing the poverty and homelessness of the refugees (Beck, Reese, and Kasindorf 1979). By the end of the 1970s, Baez’s voice had reached many new audiences, more loudly and clearly than ever before.

Action is the antidote to despair.

Staying Vital in Music’s Changing Climate: The Reagan Years Whereas Baez may have become more solidly committed to her beliefs than ever before throughout the 1970s, cementing her position in American music and culture, she was experiencing, for the ﬁrst time, the limitations of her

Joan Baez

voice and the ravages of time and touring. She started taking voice lessons for the ﬁrst time and said, “[T]he I’m not a utopian fool. I see upper range is dulling in my old age. A little training the world full of conflicts. and I can stretch my voice another ﬁve, ten years” (Beck, Reese, and Kasindorf 1979). Although political matters gave her a different voice and stretched her in new directions in the 1980s, the music business was less kind to her. After the release of Honest Lullaby, it took another seven years for Baez to ﬁnd an American record label that was willing to work with her. Her politics had complicated matters, but she still had plenty of material for an album. The early part of the 1980s continued much in the same vein as did the late 1970s—with Baez lending her support and her efforts to causes worldwide, such as the Catholic Church’s human rights and workers’ committees efforts and anti–nuclear war efforts in Brazil (New York Times 1981), and she gave a free concert in Chile in support of a human rights group. She was prohibited from performing in commercial venues in Brazil and Chile because they thought her music was too threatening, so she sang wherever she could—in churches, people’s homes, and anywhere else people gathered (McCarthy 1981). During these tours she sang her own material, native folk songs in Spanish and Portuguese, and covered John Lennon’s ode to peace “Imagine” and Dylan’s 1960s classic “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Still, when she performed Baez could still captivate a crowd even with an evening of protest songs. In a concert review in 1981, Paul Hume of the Washington Post wrote that she “held forth with the high quivering luscious vocals that have marked her as one of the more distinctive song stylists of her generation. As usual, her voice was both an amazing and saving grace that somehow managed to override the soppier sentiments” (Hume 1981). The New York Times waxed similarly poetic, saying “her chest tones are, if anything, richer and darker than a decade ago, while her upper register remains remarkably clear and limber. Her voice is a truly oracular folk-pop instrument” (Holden 1982). If technically she was still proﬁcient, critic Stephen Holden was less kind about her songwriting, saying that the likes of “Warriors of the Sun” and “Happy Birthday, Leonid Brezhnev,” both original songs, were examples of the didactic excesses of folk music and “should be shelved.” In an interview with Kurt Loder of Rolling Stone in 1983, Baez said she had offers from European labels while she was working on material for a new album. It made sense, as Baez has consistently been popular with European audiences and spent much of the early 1980s touring Europe (Lacey 1982). The touring experience was fodder for songs that stemmed from her observations of the young adults in her audience who were trying to understand her message and reconcile it with their own apathy or cynicism; Baez was tentatively calling the album Children of the Eighties. About this growing collection of songs, she said that it needed other people’s material and that for the ﬁrst time, she really felt that she had to think carefully about her career, especially

33

34

Women Icons of Popular Music

if she wanted to sell records in the United States. She recorded her demo tape with Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead but it did not work out in the end— Baez said that she was “an intrusion” and there was “too much dope intake for me to break through” (Holt 1989, 85). But it was also difﬁcult for her to make headway with American labels; she wasn’t sure if they thought she was too old or that most young people were listening to and interested in something else. Baez went with Gold Castle for Recently (1987), which was followed by the live album Diamonds & Rust in the Bullring (1989) and the studio release Speaking of Dreams (1989). Ingram writes that all these albums “continue to reﬂect her commitment to social issues” (Ingram 1991, 60). Three years later Virgin records released Play Me Backwards. Writing about this time period, Kurt Loder assessed that “when she had to choose between pursuing her political goals and maintaining a viable recording career, it was the beliefs that she stuck with” (Holt 1989, 83). At the time of the interview with Rolling Stone, Baez was forty-eight, still dedicating much of her time to humanitarian causes and only singing when the occasion called for it. Along with all of these activist and musical projects, Baez wrote her second autobiography called And A Voice To Sing With (1987). Reviewing the book in the New York Times, Barbara Goldsmith summed up Baez’s state of affairs succinctly, saying that Baez had “spent the last ﬁve years abroad, has not had a hit record in a decade and has no recording contract” and that in our “instant gratiﬁcation, celebrity worshipping society, Joan Baez appears anachronistic and trails a weary wisdom” (1987). Baez herself writes of her struggle to make sense of the 1980s, “I am a stranger in my own land, always looking to feel comfortable without selling my soul” (Goldsmith 1987). Baez’s book goes a long way to shed light on the psychological aspect of her experience—to quote Bob Dylan, the times, they were a-changing. The Resurgence of the Singer/Songwriter: 1990s and Beyond Lucky for Baez, history—predictably—often repeats itself. In the mid 1990s, singer/songwriters, male and female alike, began to become popular once again. The resurgence was most likely a direct response to the rough, electric guitar–centric, masculine rock genre known as grunge, which became popular in the early 1990s with the likes of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden, among others. Fans and music business moguls were looking for something different, although those different things were not the same thing. Fans were looking for something less masculine, less rough; music business honchos were looking for the next great musical trend they could market and make a proﬁt from. But overall, the shift in the climate was beneﬁcial for Baez. “I don’t think anybody can pretend that folk music is coming back, but there seems to be an appetite for music you have to listen to with a more careful ear,” she told the New York Times (Gavin 1992). The activities of the decade would prove her comment an understatement.

Joan Baez

When she signed with Virgin Records in 1990, Baez knew that she needed something new so as to not sound like a relic of the 1960s (Gavin 1992). And different they are, as the songs for Play Me Backwards show Latin and African inﬂuences along with the steel slide guitar. The album was her twentyeighth release and her ﬁrst recording for a major music label since 1979. Baez wrote some of her own material, from “I’m With You,” dedicated to her son Gabe, to the father-daughter reﬂection of “Edge of Glory,” “all shining with autumnal wisdom,” according to James Gavin of the New York Times. She brings her own beautiful touch to Mary Chapin Carpenter’s classic “Stones in the Road,” Janis Ian’s “Amsterdam,” and John Hiatt’s “Through Your Hands.” “Stones in the Road” even became Baez’s ﬁrst music video (Gavin 1992). Ring Them Bells is a live album that features Baez and other artists whose material owes a great deal to her—Mary Chapin Carpenter, the Indigo Girls, and Mary Black. The album was released in 1995 and was recorded at the then-longstanding folk music club in New York called The Bottom Line. Although many of the tracks are her classics such as “Diamonds and Rust” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” there is something compelling about hearing Baez backed by female artists who have come into their own because of her pioneering work (Bessman 2003). In 1997 she released her ﬁrst studio album in ﬁve years on Capitol called Gone From Danger. The material suggested that she had indeed been reinvigorated by working with many artists whom she had inspired: The album featured just one song written by Baez and the rest of the tracks are material from Sinéad Lohan, Dar Williams, Richard Shindell, and Betty Elders. In 1998, in support of the release, Baez beneﬁted from touring with the younger, witty, literate songwriter Dar Williams and other similar artists, which enabled her to reach a whole new generation of music fans. Her appearance at the Newport Folk festival in summer 1997 helped to reinvigorate her career as much as it was a testament to her longevity. The largesse of spirit is indicative of the folk music community. In a review of the festival in the Boston Globe, Steve Morse said that artists such as Gillian Welch and Dar Williams sang with her on stage “like awestruck disciples,” and that Baez “still infused the songs with that beautiful, if weathered soprano dating to 1959, when she ﬁrst played Newport” (Morse 1997). In the late 1990s, the folk-based singer/songwriter renewal was still going strong, and Baez spent much time touring—more time touring, in fact, than in the studio. Along with Ellis Paul, Patty Larkin, and the Nields, Baez helmed a fortieth anniversary celebration of the folk music mainstay Club Passim in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1999. Writing in the Boston Globe, Joan Anderman proclaimed that Baez “was, in a word, radiant. Time has softened her demeanor . . . and her voice, which is as powerful as when she cut her teeth at Club 47 in the late 50s, yet less stern and shrill” (Anderman 1999). Yet another long span of time passed—six years—before Dark Chords on a Big Guitar was released in 2003. In the wake of the tragic attacks on the United States in September 2001, many people turned to the simple power of

35

36

Women Icons of Popular Music

music for comfort, and musicians of all kinds responded with albums that addressed the nation’s fragility as well as more overtly political issues such as calling the government to task for spearheading a war in Iraq. Proving that folk music can sustain itself and that she is still a relevant player in the pantheon, the record features songs by contemporary and at times edgier songwriters such as Ryan Adams, Steve Earle, Joe Henry, Natalie Merchant, Josh Ritter, and Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. The producer, Mark Spector, found the songs for the album, which she emphasized had to be “in the countercultural vein—a derivate of folk music of some kind” (Bessman 2003). The material, although not overtly political, does conjure up some latent activist suggestions. The song “Christmas in Washington,” by Steve Earle, himself a roots rock songwriter who is not afraid to speak his mind, was a great ﬁt for the album because it seeks the return of Woody Guthrie in an era that’s driven by politicians and programmers. The song “In My Time of Need,” by the proliﬁc and versatile songwriter Ryan Adams, speaks from the point of view of a farmer who reﬂects on hard times. In the interview with Billboard to promote Dark Chords on a Big Guitar, Baez was alternately honest and humorous. She said that the situation of working with younger artists needs to be mutually beneﬁcial and hoped that the experience would inspire other songwriters to write material expressly for her. “Working with younger songwriters gives the illusion that I’m younger than I am,” she told Billboard. (At the time of the release she was sixty-two years old.) “But nobody in the world is as old as I am—except maybe Kris Kristofferson!” Baez, though, remains sanguine about the process and seems to feel inspired by what the younger folk musicians were putting together (Bessman 2003). A year later, in 2004, a live recording was made of a concert in New York, and in 2005 it was released as Bowery Songs. The advent of digital media and the increasing number of niche-like opportunities for music distribution enabled Baez to reach a whole new generation of music lovers. From the Internet to digital radio, iTunes, and other pay-for-play download services, Baez was enabled to stay active in new ways. XM Radio invited artists from many different genres to come into the studio and revisit some of their most classic songs. She appeared on the satellite radio company’s ﬁrst volume alongside artists such as Bonnie Raitt, Tracy Chapman, Roseanne Cash, Bruce Hornsby, and Willie Nelson. XM’s Artist Conﬁdential was distributed at Starbucks locations across the country and released in 2006. She’s even appeared on stage in impromptu settings, such as at a Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band’s concert in Concord, California, in June 2006 for a version of “Pay Me My Money Down” (Joan Baez ofﬁcial Web site).

MISSION, MOTIVATION, PROCESS As a singer who came into her fame at the dawn of the 1960s through her clear soprano voice, skills as an interpreter, and a burgeoning interest in nonviolent

Joan Baez

37

politics, Baez seems like the ideal candidate to embody the voice of the 1960s. As the decade progressed, I love singing with him. He Baez became more politically aware and emerged as a isn’t in tune, the phrasing is nuts, and he always wants to vocal critic of many issues. Perhaps there was no better songwriting material do a song I’ve never heard for her interpretative talent than the songwriting of before . . . It’s always an Bob Dylan. Their ﬁrst encounter was in 1961 at interesting happening when Gerde’s Folk City in New York’s Greenwich Village, Bob appears. where, despite Bob’s shaggy haircut and tattered —about Bob Dylan jacket, Baez knew that she was in the presence of a future star (Baez 1989, 84). At the time, Dylan had barely made a name for himself on the New York coffeehouse circuit. Sensing his potential, Baez invited him to join her on her August 1963 tour, but when he strummed alongside her at the August freedom march on Washington, DC, he was all but forgotten by the press (Hajdu 2001, 182). During their budding romance and Joan’s rapidly blossoming fame, Dylan found himself starstruck. As Dylan admitted in Positively 4th Street, “I lived with her, and I loved the place. And, like, I lived with her. Hey, I lived with Joan Baez” (Hajdu 2001, 184). In letters to her mother during the summer of 1964, Baez gushed that she had “gotten very close to Bobby in the last month. We have such FUN! . . . I really love him” (Baez 1989, 86–87). Their relationship seems inevitable, symbiotic; a product of its time. While Dylan was being criticized for what the New York Times called “the lack of control over his stage manner and his raucously grating singing” (Shelton 1964), Baez was picking up the praise for his compositions. Yet with the release of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, he began to gain attention and steal the spotlight from a jealous Baez. When D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back was ﬁlmed spring 1965, Baez, who had trekked to England to be with her ﬂoppy-haired disciple, did not receive a single invitation to join him onstage and for the ﬁrst time in her career found herself slipping into the background. In a scene of Pennebaker’s documentary, Baez is approached by a reporter who asks her, after taking a few pictures, what her name is, completely unaware of her status as a countercultural icon. He proceeds to spell her name wrong and realizes later who she is. In her autobiography, she comments on that period, “For the ﬁrst time in my short but monumentally successful career someone had stolen all my thunder from under my nose” (Baez 1989, 96). Still, throughout those few years they spent an enormous amount of time together, and many of her thoughtful interpretations of his songs heavily populated several of her albums, starting with “With God On Our Side” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” on Joan Baez in Concert, Part 2. Dylan’s songs also make appearances on Joan Baez/5, including “It Ain’t Me Babe,” and on Farewell Angelina, on which four out of the album’s eleven tracks are Dylan takes, from the title cut to “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.” Her interpretations of his songs were so popular and beloved by fans that in 1968 Vanguard released Any Day Now, an album

38

Women Icons of Popular Music

of sixteen Dylan covers, including “Love is Just a Four-Letter Word.” Additionally, Don’t Look Back also reveals some footage of Baez performing “Love is Just a Four-Letter Word” in her own kitchen. One might think that a pair of such proliﬁc artists would have appeared on each other’s albums numerous times, but Baez and Dylan were both staunchly independent. They only appear on two albums together. On The Bootleg Series Volume 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975, The Rolling Thunder Revue, they sing “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Mama, You Been On my Mind,” “I Shall Be Released,” and “The Water is Wide”; and on The Bootleg Series, Volume 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964—Concert at Philharmonic Hall, they sing “Silver Dagger,” “With God On Our Side,” and “It Ain’t Me, Babe.” A search for footage of Baez and Dylan, either performing together or her singing his songs on YouTube, the popular video-sharing Web site, reveals a large number of videos available for viewing. They range from them singing “Deportees” in 1976 to “Blowin’ In the Wind” to an early performance of them in 1963 singing “When the Ships Come In” at the civil rights march in Washington, DC, at the dawn of his career. It is worth seeking out these scratchy videos. Baez discusses how they performed together in front of a crowd; in those early years she got incredibly nervous before going onstage. “We had to look straight at each other when we were singing. It was just too moving to look out at the sea of faces. We never sang that way, staring straight into each other’s eyes. We gave each other strength, and it was very intimate and the most public thing we ever did,” said Baez (Hajdu 2001, 183). The relationship was truly symbiotic, and in a 1983 interview much later, with Kurt Loder of Rolling Stone, Baez explained Dylan: “He didn’t do what he wrote about—I did what he wrote about, in a sense. I was politically active. But to have it in song was what was so miraculous to me, because I didn’t write then. And I’ve never written that well anyway” (Holt 1989, 87). Finally and perhaps most eloquently, in his book Positively 4th Street, David Hajdu wrote about Dylan and Baez’s performances together, saying “Their voices were odd together, a mismatch—salt pork and meringue; but the tension between their styles made their presence together all the more compelling” (Hajdu 2001, 152). Despite Baez’s self-criticism about her songwriting abilities, she did start writing songs, starting with the 1967 album Joan. Perhaps her sensitivity to her own shortcomings can be traced to the fact that she has a history of stealing from other musicians, starting with her college friend Debbie Green. “It’s true. When I ﬁrst started, I used a lot from Debbie’s act, but the alternative would have been codependent silliness . . . She was modestly talented but not ambitious. I was going someplace, she wasn’t. I didn’t hurt her. I only helped myself” (Hajdu 2001, 18). Many critics contend that her real skills were as an interpreter of others’ material. Perhaps sensitive to that observation and selfconscious about her strengths and weaknesses, in many live performances Baez would preface a song by saying something self-deprecating about her own material.

Joan Baez

Because much of Baez’s career has been inextricably linked with activism and protest, her songwriting has been inﬂuenced by her involvement in causes ranging from the Vietnam War to gun control, to political prisoners, to the draft, to immigration, to civil rights, and to refugees. For example, her song “Children of the Eighties” was inspired by an odd concert in which she was sandwiched on a bill between Frank Zappa and Genesis in Germany. Baez described the crowd of 50,000 or so revelers as “very happy, doped-out kids” with whom she struggled to connect. But connect she did, once she started talking about war, human rights, and peace. “I meant something to them—I represented the Sixties, that was clear” (Holt 1989, 85). In the early 1960s, you could ﬁnd Baez marching with Dr. Martin Luther King in Mississippi, singing “We Shall Overcome” to a crowd of 250,000 (Ingram 1990, 58). Baez has spent time with civil rights workers in Montgomery and Birmingham, Alabama, and has served time in jail for peaceful demonstrations. Baez has even spoken out against the more radical approaches of the Black Panthers and the Chicago Seven (Beck, Reese, and Kasindorf 1979). Throughout, she has often been misunderstood by the media, her peers in activism, and the music industry in general. “In the beginning, there were the hippies, the freaks, the pinkos and I was called all of those things. Now, I’m accused of working for the CIA,” she sighed. “There has been no change [on my part] whatsoever,” she told Newsweek (Beck, Reese, and Kasindorf 1979). In 1972, Baez visited Hanoi as a guest of the North Vietnamese during nearly two weeks of the infamous Christmas bombings. Her experience there, huddled in shelters night after night, inspired the material for her album Where Are You Now My Son? According to Caroline Ingram, it is the album “of which Joan Baez is most proud. The effects of her time in a war have stayed with her. To this day, she sometimes jolts out of deep sleep when she hears a plane overhead” (Ingram 1990, 59). As a result of being so active in numerous humanitarian causes all over the world, from Latin America to Africa to Russia, Czech Republic, Afghanistan, Turkey, Israel, and Lebanon, it is crucial that Baez ﬁnds some peaceful time for reﬂection. “I ﬁnd I need quiet time. Silence has been enormously important to me in whatever I’m doing because it keeps me from doing too much. It keeps things somehow calmed down” (Ingram 1990, 65). Baez has spent years in therapy and used self-help tapes and other materials to keep herself grounded.

LEGACY AND OTHER INTERESTS Baez has been a supporter of nearly every nonproﬁt humanitarian organization one might think of, from Amnesty International to Humanitas, to serving as the opening performer to the 1984 Live Aid—Artists United Against Hunger concert (Ingram 1990, 59).

39

40

Women Icons of Popular Music

Baez’s legacy is that of an activist musician—her career is a quintessential textbook example of how an artist can use her art as a platform to raise awareness about issues that are important to her. In her early years, her activism made its way directly into her music and other creative efforts. As she has gotten older, it is fair to say that her activist efforts have taken more of her time than her music. Although she continues to tour the United States, Europe, and other parts of the world, she is not recording new material as frequently as she did during the heyday of her career, from 1959 through the late 1970s. By the 1990s, though, Baez had set aside activism thanks to a younger generation of musicians with a renewed interest in her (see sidebar).

I think rap is very important— whether we like it or not. It speaks most clearly about the sector of this country that needs to be heard—and [rappers are] so desperate to be heard that the words often come out the way they do.

Joan Baez and the New Folk Movement Joan Baez epitomizes a counterculture icon who has left her mark on more than a generation of performers, in the growing folk-pop genre that includes Dar Williams, the Indigo Girls, Laura Cantrell, Erin McKeown, Richard Shindell, and Catie Curtis. Many of Baez’s disciples even emerged from the same Cambridge, Massachusetts, venues where she started out. The new folk movement that started in the middle to late 1990s relies on innovation and genre blending, but all show a strong debt to Baez. Dar Williams and Catie Curtis are folk-pop pioneers with roots in Massachusetts who possess vocal talent and songwriting abilities reminiscent of Baez’s highly personal songs. Curtis’s intensely self-reflective lyrics chronicle lesbianism, motherhood, and adoption to great critical acclaim. Reminders of Baez’s darkly literate hit “Diamonds & Rust” can be found throughout Williams’s ballads “If I Wrote You” and “February.” Baez even covers those two selections on her 1997 album of cover songs. Both Williams and Baez have a silvery, delicate soprano and a knack for phrasing. In fact, the complex narratives in “If I Wrote You” and “February” are a page out of the Baez heartbreak canon, using nature, written communication, and metaphor. The Indigo Girls, frequent collaborators of Baez’s, have built a lasting career with progressive folk rock; their song “Welcome Me” was covered by Baez in her 1995 album of covers Ring Them Bells. Baez explained of the Indigo Girls, “They call me their matriarch, and I call them my whipper-snappers” (Bessman 2003). Baez stressed that she learns from the process and knows it ensures her legacy. She said, “People say to me, ‘How nice you’re introducing these artists.’ What, are you kidding? These artists are literally giving me back my career” (Bessman 2003).

Joan Baez

Baez continues to inspire collaborations and work by other artists and continues to participate in new and compelling artistic projects. She herself has created some wall paintings in locations such as Paris, France and Brusson, Italy. Baez has appeared with the Teatro ZinZanni in San Francisco a number of times—the organization puts on a European-style cabaret show with vaudeville, sketches, and circus acts, done in the form of dinner theater. In October 2003, classical guitarist Sharon Isbin debuted the composition “Joan Baez Suite, Opus 144.” John Duarte wrote the piece for Isbin, which was commissioned by the Augustine Foundation. The opus features some work from the early part of Baez’s career. Much of Baez’s time is wrapped up in activism efforts, many of them sharing a central tenet against violence, government intrusion, antiwar, and anti-efforts that destroy or threaten the environment, the Earth, and local communities. Living in California has kept her busy; in recent years, for example, she has lent her voice to farmland preservation. In May 2006, she joined other activists, artists, and actors such as Julia Butterﬂy Hill, Daryl Hannah, John Quigley, Ben Harper, and Leonardo diCaprio in supporting the South Central Farm in Los Angeles, which is believed to be the largest urban garden/community farm in the United States. Part of her protest involved setting up camp in a tree in the garden overnight with fellow activists Hill and Quigley. The farm’s future is threatened by development (Joan Baez ofﬁcial Web site). Baez has written extensively about her experiences in two autobiographical books, and she has been the subject of numerous critical essays. It took her nearly forty years, but she seems ﬁnally able to impart some wisdom and maturity about her afﬁliation with Dylan. “It’s a wonderful thing to be linked forever with Bob Dylan. Now that I’m over whatever emotional stuff I had to leave behind, it’s an honor. . . because he created the best music we had in the ’60s” (CBS News 2004). It is probably not too much of a stretch to argue that any female artist who has written a protest song in the past thirty years owes a musical debt to Joan Baez. She is a woman whose career consistently shows the ability to be a respected musician yet still retain one’s conscience and remain steadfast in one’s beliefs. Her Quaker roots taught her an unfailing sense that it was important to tell the truth, and Baez has indeed remained true to herself throughout her career, inspiring legions of artists to do the same.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Joan Baez. Vanguard, 1960 Joan Baez, Volume 2. Vanguard, 1961 Joan Baez in Concert. Vanguard, 1963 Farewell Angelina. Vanguard, 1965

41

42

Women Icons of Popular Music

Noel. Vanguard, 1966 Any Day Now. Vanguard, 1968 Blessed Are . . . Vanguard, 1971 Diamonds & Rust. A&M, 1975 Gone from Danger. Capitol, 1997 Dark Chords on a Big Guitar. Koch, 2003 Bowery Songs. Proper, 2003

FURTHER READING Anderman, Joan. “Night of Gratitude, Talent at Passim.” Boston Globe (January 18, 1999). Baez, Joan. Daybreak. New York: Dial Press, 1968. Baez, Joan. And A Voice To Sing With: A Memoir. Book Sales, 1989. Baez, Joan. Ofﬁcial artist Web site: www.joanbaez.com. Beck, Melinda, with Michael Reese and Martin Kasindorf. “The Voice of Joan Baez.” Newsweek (August 13, 1979). Bessman, Jim. “Baez Turns to New Generation for Latest Songs.” Billboard (September 13, 2003). CBS News. “Joan Baez: The Good Life, Folk Singer is Happy to Sing Tunes from the Past.” (March 21, 2004). Available online at www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/ 18/sunday/main607215.shtml. Connolly, Patrick. “Joan Baez Reaches the Awkward Age.” Globe and Mail, Toronto, Canada (June 7, 1982). Darling, Lynn. “Joan Baez at 38: New Anthems for the Eternal Crusader.” Washington Post (June 29, 1979). Eder, Bruce. Joan. All Music Guide. Available online at www.allmusic.com/cg/amg .dll?p=amg&sql=10:ajfpxqr5ldte. Gavin, James. “Joan Baez: the First Lady of Folk.” New York Times (November 29, 1992). Goldsmith, Barbara. “Life on Struggle Mountain.” New York Times (June 21, 1987). Graustark, Barbara. “Newsmakers.” Newsweek (June 11, 1979). Hajdu, David. Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2001. Hall, Carla. “The Timeless Ballad of Joan Baez: Doing Donahue, Singing of Ladi Di and Working the Washington Scene.” Washington Post (October 10, 1981). Holden, Stephen. “Joan Baez’s Voice.” New York Times (July 4, 1982). Holt, Sid, (ed.), and the editors of Rolling Stone. The Rolling Stone Interviews: The 1980s. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989. Hume, Paul. “Joan Baez.” Washington Post (October 12, 1981). Ingram, Catherine. In the Footsteps of Gandhi: Conversations with Spiritual Social Activists. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1990. Joyce, Mike. “Baez’s ‘Lullaby,’ Muldaur’s ‘Eyes.’ ” Washington Post (August 26, 1979). Lacey, Liam. “Baez Makes Listener Rejoice.” Globe and Mail, Toronto, Canada (March 1, 1982).

Joan Baez

McCarthy, Colman. “A Rolling Stone Carries No Message.” Washington Post (December 12, 1981). Morse, Steve. “Newport Mingles Past, Future.” Boston Globe (August 11, 1997). New York Times. “Joan Baez Again Refuses to Pay Part of Income Taxes.” (April 16, 1965). New York Times. “Two Baez Concerts Banned in Brazilian Cities.” (May 26, 1981). Perry, Joellen. “In Diamonds and In Rust: Social Beliefs and Inﬂuence of Folk Singer Joan Baez.” U.S. News and World Report (July 8, 2002). Ruhlmann, William. “Joan Baez biography.” All Music Guide. Available online at www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=&sql=11:0ifqxql5ldte. Shelton, Robert. “Folk Joins Jazz at Newport.” New York Times (July 19, 1959). Shelton, Robert. “Joan Baez, 19, Offers Folk-Song Program.” New York Times (November 7, 1960). Shelton, Robert. “Bridging the Gap.” New York Times (April 16, 1961). Shelton, Robert. “Joan Baez Sings at Forest Hills.” New York Times (August 10, 1964). Time. “The Folk Girls.” (June 1, 1962). Time. “People.” (January 31, 1972). Turner, Wallace. “Antiwar Demonstrations Held Outside Draft Boards Across U.S.” New York Times (October 16, 1967).

43

Courtesy of Photofest

Mary J. Blige

46

Women Icons of Popular Music

OVERVIEW

She is Aretha to the rap generation. She embodies the hip-hop woman in her dress and mannerisms. She has attitude and she can sing. Every hip-hop fan loves her.

In just a little more than a dozen years, Mary J. Blige has proven that it is possible, although not always easy, to be a successful, strong, independent black woman in the music business. Initially, she was proclaimed to be either the new Aretha Franklin or —Chris Wilder, The Source Chaka Khan, but she shares little with her predecessors other than the milieu of rhythm and blues and a strong, beautiful voice. Her success was something new within the then-burgeoning world of rap and hip-hop. There was not, before the ascension of Mary J. Blige, a paradigm for a smart, successful, strong African American singer whose music melded the smooth soulfulness of rhythm and blues with the attitude, delivery, and collaborative approach that customarily characterizes the hip-hop and rap worlds. With her trademark (often) blonde hair, oversize sunglasses, and super-ﬂy outﬁts, Blige set the fashion standard for the female hip-hop songstress; even when she was just wearing chunky white sneakers and jeans, her self-described “yo girl” look, she always looked carefully put together, a woman aware of her image. From the beginning of her career, Blige’s songs made an impact on a number of different types of audiences, thanks to the fact that her unique musical style would later inspire the successful, uncompromising careers of female African American artists such as Missy Elliott, Lil’ Kim, Lauryn Hill (both on her own and as part of the Fugees), Alicia Keys, Destiny’s Child, Ashanti, and Aaliyah, among others (see sidebar). Rolling Stone even went so far as to say she “pioneered the movement that would become neo-soul” (George-Warren, Romanowski, and Pareles 2001), which includes the likes of Alicia Keys along with Lizz Wright, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Macy Gray, Vivian Green, and other gospel and rhythm and blues–inﬂuenced African American singers and songwriters. Blige herself cites gospel music and the music of Aretha Franklin, the Staple Singers, Otis Redding, Gladys Knight, and Sam Cooke as inﬂuences. Her voice is not technically proﬁcient, but it is imbued with passion, pain, and determination. Indeed, the imagery of Blige throughout her career has from the very start reinforced those ideas, as her album covers often feature a close-up of her face with her name scrawled across them, reminiscent of either her signature or urban grafﬁti. Remarkably, every single one of her albums has placed well, usually fairly high, on myriad Billboard charts—some even in Canada—dating all the way back to her debut record What’s the 411?, recorded in 1992. Each of her albums, with the exception of 2002’s Dance for Me, has reached a number one slot on a number of different charts, including Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, Top Internet Albums, or the Billboard 200. The Recording Industry Association of America’s inventory of gold and platinum recordings, including singles and albums, lists Blige no fewer than thirty-two times. Every one

Mary J. Blige

Say It Loud: I’m Black and I’m Proud and I’m Female Mary J. Blige’s career took a turn toward the personal with her 1994 album My Life, which consisted of songs she had written herself. The record was a watershed moment, introducing a sense of fierce honesty and pride into R&B. The autobiographical elements present through the album’s songs gave other strong female singers in R&B license to give voice to their own pain, suffering, and accomplishments. The diverse group of soul, R&B, and hip-hop artists— especially Erykah Badu, MeShell Ndegéocello, Lauryn Hill, Jill Scott, Destiny’s Child, Lizz Wright, and Alicia Keys—owe something to Blige’s trailblazing selfrighteousness and classy example. Badu emerged in 1997 with the jazzy, meditative single “On and On,” from her number two charting debut Baduizm. The record gave her the tag of “neo soul” and earned her comparisons to Billie Holiday as well as earning her the first of four Grammy Awards. When songwriter and singer Lauryn Hill broke away from the men of the Fugees and released her solo record The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in 1998, it effortlessly combined rap, reggae, soul, and R&B, and she came across as a wise, literate sister who could offer advice and empower the listener. In 1999, Hill won five of the eleven Grammys for which she was nominated. Three years later, in 2000, Jill Scott, who used to perform with The Roots, released her debut Who Is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds Volume 1. At the Essence Music Festival in 2006, the two-time Grammy-winning Scott urged listeners, particularly females, to demand better from rap and hip-hop, which often portrays women of color in a negative manner. The poet-singer peppers her albums with spoken words and collaborated with Badu to write the song “You Got Me,” recorded by The Roots in 1999.

of her albums has achieved at least gold and/or multiplatinum status except for 2002’s Dance for Me. Several of her singles, from 1992’s “You Remind Me” to “Real Love” and “Not Goin’ Cry,” have also achieved at least gold status. Videos such as the single video for “Not Today” and the long form video for Live From Los Angeles have reached platinum and gold status, respectively. However, it was not until the release of the aptly named The Breakthrough that her fan base expanded beyond hip-hop kids, and “urban/Latino chicks, and some Japanese.” She told Rolling Stone in 2006 that “now we’re getting ﬁfty-year-old white men with gray hair. It’s amazing” (Edwards 2006). Commercial acclaim tells only part of an artist’s story; the rest is revealed by the esteem of critics and musical peers. Blige’s albums are especially noteworthy because they inspire agreement from both critics and consumers. Her work is always deemed worthy of interest by music writers and critics, yet it consistently reaches a broad commercial audience. Blige also continually wins

47

48

Women Icons of Popular Music

the regard of her colleagues within her own musical community, inspiring collaboration with a wide range of artists including Sean Combs, George Michael, Sting, and U2. Blige offered her searing, passionate vocals to the U2 song “One” and turned it into a duet with Bono; it appears on her 2006 album The Breakthrough. She has received three Grammy Awards and been nominated numerous times. In 1995 she won the award, along with Method Man, for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for the Ashford and Simpson tune “I’ll Be There for You/You’re All I Need to Get By.” Two more followed: Best Female R&B Vocal Performance in 2002 for the song “He Think I Don’t Know” and Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals in 2003 for “Whenever I Say Your Name,” a song she recorded with Sting for his album Sacred Love. In 2006 she was nominated for an unprecedented number of Grammys—eight—with the song “Be Without You,” nominated for both record and song of the year. She walked away with three Grammys: The Breakthrough garnered her one apiece for Best R&B Album and Best Female Vocal Performance, and “Be Without You” nabbed her and her three co-writers a Grammy for Best R&B Song. Throughout her career, Blige has battled the triple threats of drugs, depression, and alcohol, which have been a result of low self-esteem, anger, and unresolved issues from her childhood. This caused her to earn a reputation in the earlier years of her career as a difﬁcult diva. But although substances complicate how an artist may be perceived by those who work with her on a daily basis and by her fans, her own uncompromising personality and razor-sharp focus on what she wants could also earn an artist the label “difﬁcult.” It is worth speculating, however, that if a man were exhibiting these characteristics, such pejorative terms would not be entertained.

EARLY YEARS It is not always clear how much of what consumers experience and understand about the personae of beloved rap and hip-hop stars is posturing and how much of it really stems from that artist’s life experiences. It is safe to ascribe Mary J. Blige to the category of the latter, for she grew up a difﬁcult environment, and whereas her songwriting comes from that rough place it also offers her an opportunity for transcendence. Blige was born in the Bronx as the youngest of Cora and Thomas Blige’s two daughters. Her dad was a jazz musician who left the family before Blige turned four. Her mother took her and her older sister, La Tonya, to their grandmother’s house in Savannah, Georgia (Brown 2007, 10). During that time she was exposed to gospel music in her grandmother’s Pentecostal church in Savannah, which, over the years, helped break her out of her shyness. “I used to be scared. I’m shy now but I was terribly shy then. But everyone

Mary J. Blige

49

would push me,” she told USA Today (Jones 1992). They spent a little over a year there and returned to Be careful what you ask for, the Bronx before Mary turned ﬁve. After another because real love is not people couple of years the family moved to the Schlobam yes ma’aming you to death. housing projects in Yonkers, a crime-ridden neigh- Real love is painful, in a good borhood. Blige spent her time evading both the local way, because real love is hoodlum “Juice” and girls who were jealous of her finding out who you are. because she was dating the hottest guy on the block, who also happened to be a drug dealer (Jones 1992). She described her years there, saying that she would get into ﬁghts and that she constantly had to prove herself to protect herself from harm. About her experience, she said, “Growing up in the projects is like living in a barrel of crabs. If you try to get out, one of the other crabs tries to pull you down” (Brown 2007, 10). Years later on The Oprah Winfrey Show she would reveal that she was sexually assaulted during those years. Thankfully, music was always a part of her life, and it was her solace. Blige spent her youth singing in church choirs and entering talent shows (McAdams 1992) and winning a contest when she was seven by singing “Respect” by Aretha Franklin (Brown 2007, 11). The roots of her sound were informed by what she heard, especially the classics. She said, “All my life, old music has been the best music to me. I have more old records than new stuff. I have an old soul” (Jones 1992). In addition to being an old soul, living in the projects forced Mary and her sister to grow up much more quickly than normal. Although their mother, a nurse, kept the family together and stayed strong, the Blige women had some difﬁcult times. With a foundation in soul, gospel, and rhythm and blues, Blige found her genre as a teenager when she became obsessed with hip-hop. Block parties would take place in the streets of the neighborhood, and the deejays would bring their records. People would try to rap, and she credits those block parties for inspiration for her own beats (Jones 1992). Blige dropped out of high school during her junior year, and when she was seventeen, she made a demo of herself at a mall in nearby White Plains. Her song of choice was Anita Baker’s “Caught up in the Rapture,” her favorite at the time. The tape got passed through the hands of her stepfather, who worked with a singer who then gave it to his manager. Somehow it got to Jeff Redd, an A&R representative for Uptown Records, and then into the hands of Uptown Records’s CEO Andre Harrell. The process took four years for her to get signed, but apparently her Mount Vernon neighborhood had been a mining ground for other Uptown talent such as Heavy D, Al B. Sure!, and Kyle West (McAdams 1992). Harrell signed in her in 1989 and she became the label’s youngest and ﬁrst female artist (Brown 2007, 21). As so many female rhythm and blues singers have historically done, Blige got her break singing backup; in her case, on albums for local artists such as Father MC. Even greater exposure came through her song “You Remind Me,” which appeared on the soundtrack to the ﬁlm

50

Women Icons of Popular Music

Strictly Business. “I didn’t think it was going to be that big. It’s all been a big surprise,” she said (McIver 1992). Blige met Sean “Puffy” Combs, who at the time was serving as the senior director of A&R for Uptown, in 1991. Combs treated her as his protégé and took her under his wing. (Later on, Combs would be given his own label with Uptown Records.) At the time she recorded that infamous tape at the mall, Blige said she was not looking for a music career. “I wasn’t looking for a deal, I wasn’t looking for anything! I was just playing around. But I thank God for it,” she told Billboard (McAdams 1992). With her debut What’s the 411?, released in July 1992 on MCA Records, Blige became the “reigning queen of her own hybrid category: hip-hop soul,” according to Stanton Swihart of All Music Guide. Prior to the release, label honcho Harrell had predicted just that when he told Billboard magazine, “Mary is going to bet the new queen of hip-hop soul,” a moniker that was emblazoned on T-shirts during the release of her record (McAdams 1992). The album itself, comprised of twelve tracks written by various artists, includes songs that she herself did not write along with sonic embellishments such as answering machine snippets. Critics were able to frame her music in a larger context, and certainly tracks such as “Real Love” and Chaka Kahn’s “Sweet Thing” sound like timeless classics, partially because they call to mind the best of Khan and Franklin. Other tracks do not hold up quite as well and feel more dated, such as “Reminisce” and “Love No Limit,” which are primarily driven by synthesizers. Standout songs include “You Remind Me” and the duet “I Don’t Want To Do Anything,” a duet with Jodeci’s K-Ci. Critical response, for the most part, was favorable. Billboard called her “young, sassy and streetwise, with a hard-hitting, raised-in-church voice” and described the songs as both “hip-hop soul and ghetto avant-garde,” and calls the debut “vastly appealing” and Blige “an artist to watch” (Billboard 1992). Billboard mentioned her style and voice, saying that Blige managed to meld the nuances and delivery of gospel with hip-hop style; the material was strengthened by the fact that the backing vocals were multi-tracked (McAdams 1992). Although many critics could agree that Blige had promise and that her voice was smooth, strong, and beautiful, the quality of her songs was a matter of debate. In Rolling Stone, her biography asserts that “even the sweet songs” on her debut were noteworthy because they offered a bit of hard-won realism that had been missing from many of the popular love songs on the charts at the time. Blige made an impact that resonated throughout other genres and styles of music. USA Today declared her the “ﬁrst woman to break into the maledominated world of new jack swing” (Jones 1992). Blige disagreed with that terminology, preferring the term hip-hop soul, which has stuck with her through her career. “There’s a difference. It’s more street. We use old James Brown beats. This is a time where people want to hear more old than new,” she explained. Rapper Grand Puba, who featured her on his album Reel to Reel and who sang a duet with her on her debut’s title cut, said that “she’s dope

Mary J. Blige

51

because she blends hip-hop beats with R&B ﬂavors, and keeps her music raw, not overproduced.” Blige At the end of the day, hip-hop emphasized to USA Today that she intended that spe- is the foundation of Mary J. ciﬁc feel—“only the necessary instruments were used. Blige. Hip-hop is the reason We were trying for a whole different sound. Everything my music even exists. I is laid back—even the dancing tunes” (Jones 1992). wouldn’t have a bed of music The album appealed to a broad audience, thus [without it] . . . I’m never indeed making her an artist worth watching. Chart going to resent or disrespect it. positions reinforced that promise, such as number When I rise, it rises. . . . It’s one on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums as well as part of Mary J. Blige. number six on the Billboard 200, along with six songs that placed on a number of singles charts. Her songs have found listeners in a variety of categories, from “Real Love” in 1992 peaking at number one on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks chart to another number one peak for “You Remind Me” on the same track to appearances on Top 40 mainstream, Hot Dance Music, Rhythmic Top 40, and Billboard Hot 100. The album had a two-year staying power, since the song “My Love” climbed to number twenty-three in 1994 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks chart. Additionally, the album is remarkable because it went gold within two months of its release (by September 1992), reached platinum status by October 1992, and went multiplatinum, reaching sales of 2 million copies, by the following February. Although Blige had created that tape at the mall on a lark, by the time it got into the hands of Combs, he had other thoughts—he saw the potential audience. He told Billboard in 1992 that he was looking to create a female artist that young hip-hop kids would like and that young black females did not have many artists to look up to. When he met Blige and they started working together, things changed. “Then the whole concept developed into ghetto avant-garde, a combination of hip hop beats with jazz and soul undertones. As we progressed with the album, her voice started progressing, started reminding people of a Chaka or Anita or Sade mixture” (McAdams 1992). With What’s the 411?, the queen of hip-hop soul had arrived.

CAREER PATH More singles from the album were released in 1993, including “Love No Limit,” “Reminisce,” and the cover of Chaka Khan’s “Sweet Thing.” By the end of that year, 411 had sold 3 million copies. The success inspired a remix album, which was released in December 1993. Those versions crept into radio and took up residence through part of 1994—a great place to be if you’re an artist who is working on the next project. Looking back at the immediate success of What’s the 411?, it is not easy to determine how much of that album is a genuine reﬂection of Blige’s talent

52

Women Icons of Popular Music

because much it was written with collaborators. Consequently, it is hard to say how much of its success can be attributed to her, and how much to the hip-hop mastermind Sean Puffy Combs, who oversaw its production, the producers Dave Hall and DeVante Swing, and/or other players such as Tony Dofat and rapper Grand Puba. Their artistic touch, however, helped Blige make her mark. And through the years Blige, like many other female music icons, has done much to subtly redeﬁne herself, tweak her image, and battle the kind of personal demons that often stereotypically accompany those who are famous, rich, or otherwise in the limelight. Around this time she was in a long-term relationship with musician K-Ci Hailey, a member of the group and label mate Jodeci (Brown 2007, 20). While working on the next album, Combs helped Blige develop her voice and become more conscious of her image. At this point he had left Uptown to create his own label, Bad Boy Entertainment, but he served as the executive producer of her subsequent release, My Life, in 1995 (Brown 2007, 22). Although it was yet another project created with the heavy inﬂuence of Sean Combs, the epic feel of My Life strayed a bit from its roots. What it lost in “street cred” it more than made up for in personal truths. The record gave voice to her own personal pain, which is plainly clear throughout and engages the listener. Never one to view her world with rose-colored glasses, Blige’s seventeen songs strongly suggest that sadness and happiness can and often do coexist. Sometimes, those seemingly contradictory emotions can work together beautifully. In the case of Blige’s My Life, they express her own heartfelt truths, which helped fans understand a bit more about where she was coming from. At times, some critics have noted, the music verges on becoming overwrought. This album is perhaps the ﬁrst time we see Mary J. Blige come through personally in her work; she had a hand in writing or co-writing nearly every track, with the exception of three. Her songs chronicle the “bitter pain and dark depression she had experienced in her life,” according to Terrell Brown (Brown 2007, 22). Overall, though, the decision to be honest captivated her fans and their reaction surprised her. Biographer Terrell Brown wrote that her “brutal honesty” distinguished her from the sea of singers and musicians, regardless of the fact that some critics did not think her voice itself was remarkable (Brown 2007, 22). The response to My Life inspired her to get her life in order. She says that many people wrote to her about her music and explained how they could relate to her pain. “I didn’t want them to go through those suicidal pains, so I wanted to get myself together so that we could all get ourselves together. I can’t force things down people’s throats but what I can do is try to ﬁx Mary” (Brown 2007, 22–23). Without irony and in all earnestness, the album’s ﬁrst single, a groovy funk song, was titled “Be Happy.” It peaked at twenty-nine on the Billboard Hot 100, and then landed at number six on the R&B Singles chart. Blige told Rolling Stone “my girlfriend Arlene helped me write that song.

Mary J. Blige

We were in these terrible relationships and we just wanted to be happy, so we were smoking cigarettes” (Edwards 2006). She said, looking back on the song, “When I perform it, everybody always sings it. When I wrote those lyrics, I was going through so much. I really wanted to be happy. What I found is that I have to love myself in order to be happy” (Herndon 2007). The album had great success with radio; several more songs were released as singles, such as a cover of the Rose Royce song “I’m Goin’ Down” along with “You Bring Me Joy” and “I Love You.” The songs are unfettered and uncorrupted by excessive collaborators or producers and are aided through the smart, unobtrusive use of samples. The album’s cover art establishes a ﬁerce, uncompromising impression on the unsuspecting casual consumer, with a photograph of Blige wearing a black leather cap pulled low, her eyes just about obscured and her hair dyed blonde and plaited into two braids on either side of her head. Subsequent to the success of My Life, Blige experienced some difﬁculties with personal relationships. Stardom had brought the issues of her youth and teen years to a head—the anger and struggle now had to compete with success and fame. Blige, unprepared for the fame she was experiencing, was suffering from low-self esteem after being told all her life by her “mean aunts” that she would never amount to anything worthwhile (Brown 2007, 11). She was battling drug addictions, alcoholism, and depression. To further complicate matters, her relationship with K-Ci Hailey had turned abusive. Reﬂecting back on this period to Rolling Stone, she said, “It seems like I’ve always been in a situation where a man is jealous of me” (Edwards 2006). She said that in soul music, in particular in its relation to My Life and her personal relationships, the pain was so heavy she was not sure how else to handle it (Edwards 2006). After its release, she decided to gain better control of her work. Blige cut her artistic ties with Combs, who had begun focusing on the burgeoning career of The Notorious B.I.G. and Uptown Records, whose had lost Harrell to Motown (Brown 2007, 26). She signed with MCA Records and hired Death Row Records label honcho Marion “Suge” Knight as her ﬁnancial advisor. The success of her two previous albums enabled her to start making decisions on her own for the third. For Share My World, released in 1997, Blige hired many hands to help her out, including Babyface, Rodney Jerkins, R. Kelly, and the duo of Terry Lewis and Jimmy Jam, who are creative minds who had done much great work with Janet Jackson. Share My World debuted at number one on the Billboard charts and spawned four number one singles, including “Love is All We Need” (featuring Nas), “I Can Love You” (with Lil’ Kim), “Everything,” and “Seven Days.” The album went triple platinum and sold 5 million copies worldwide—no small feat. By the beginning of 1998, the album nabbed for her an American Music Award for Favorite Album—Soul/ Rhythm & Blues. She toured in support of Share My World, and the fruits of those labors resulted in the live album called The Tour, which eventually went gold (Brown 2007, 27–29).

53

54

Women Icons of Popular Music

Turning a Musical Corner and Digging Into Her Soul Nevertheless, Share My World’s success continued to pave the way for Mary, whose songs are packed with more celebrity-musician appearances than any of her releases to date. It includes the memorable duet with Lauryn Hill “All That I Can Say.” She also judiciously used samples as well as performance contributions from some heavy hitters from other genres such as Eric Clapton, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, and Bernie Taupin. For instance, “Deep Inside” snatches parts of Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets,” while another track, “Time,” takes bits from Stevie Wonder’s “Pastime Paradise” and Al Green’s “I’m Glad You’re Mine.” The album showed a continued embrace of her own emotional power, although some of the grittier, more confrontational elements had disappeared. Blige was starting to forge her own path, growing as an artist. She was unafraid to get a helping hand and collaborate with another artist while maintaining her strong presence throughout the album so that the listener does not feel, as with her earlier albums, that her music jumps genres. The rock critic who goes solely by the name Toure observed a subtle psychological shift in Blige’s songwriting, describing it in Rolling Stone as “Blige seems to have moved from the Terry McMillan once-again-he’s-breaking-myheart mantra to, perhaps, an Oprah love-your-spirit ethos” (Touré 1999). In juxtaposing two prominent African American women—McMillan, a novelist whose books How Stella Got Her Groove Back and Waiting to Exhale are about strong women who’ve been done wrong, and Oprah Winfrey, the queen of motivational, self-afﬁrming, you-go-girl-ism on daytime television, in magazines, and in other media—an attempt was made to place Blige within a context of other African American women with much national, cultural inﬂuence. In other words, Blige’s songwriting is less about victimhood that comes with songs about love gone wrong and more about a woman ﬁnding her independence and struggling to take responsibility for herself and her life (Touré 1999). In “All That I Can Say,” produced by Lauryn Hill, Blige declares “loving you is wonderful/Something like a miracle.” A few songs later, in “Beautiful Ones,” her lyrics directly answer or counter what Touré calls her “classic theme song,” “Everyday it Rains.” He observed that Blige was “moving away from the hip-hop tinged interpolation-heavy sound of her earlier albums” (1999). Working with a live band, or singing with Eric Clapton’s guitar or Elton John’s piano pointed toward a more soulful, organic sound—an evolution. Blige ends the album with a sassy take on the disco classic “Let No Man Put Asunder,” which ﬁnds her trying to hang onto a “love too good to throw away.” Ending on that feel-good vibe somewhat reprises the sentiments she expressed in My Life, “All I want is to be happy.” The quest for something expressed so simply, however, is far more complex than that. At the end of 1999, the album was released as a double disc set containing videos for the singles “All That I Can Say” and “Deep Inside,” and two bonus

Mary J. Blige

tracks including “Confrontation” and “Sincerity,” which featured Nas and DMX. The album was critically acclaimed and went double platinum. Around this time, Blige and her label MCA decided it would be a good idea to dip into the club music market, so they issued danceable remixes of the singles from Mary, which were met with success. Mid-Career Crisis: Battling Personal Demons At this point in her career, although her sound—and her style—had solidiﬁed, her personal life was suffering. Blige had earned a reputation, particularly in the media, for being unreliable, moody, and difﬁcult to work with (Brown 2007, 33). During this difﬁcult period leading up to No More Drama, Blige got involved in a car accident and she was frequently too high or drunk to be of much use during photo shoots and other media-related events (34). Ironically, her pain gave her much fame, which made the cycle difﬁcult to break. “I had no idea that my personal pain would create such a big fan base. Everything that was bringing me down was everything that rose me up from a business standpoint that is . . . All the money and fame in the world couldn’t change what was going on in my heart. That’s how messed up I was, and how depressed I was” (34). It was time for change; regardless of her fan base, her personal life was starting to make a consistently negative impact on her business. Years later she recalled the experience to Essence magazine, highlighting how in some ways she felt powerless despite the fact that her albums were regularly selling in the millions. “Everyone was making decisions about me and what I should be doing, but I didn’t necessarily agree with everything, so I wouldn’t do things.” She also noted that the whole business was not as glamorous as it seemed. The harsher realities of fame had kicked in. She broke up with K-Ci ﬁnally and started to try to put things behind her. Her battle with and subsequent freedom from addictions to drugs and alcohol informed her strong ﬁfth release No More Drama. There were a couple of things that changed her signiﬁcantly in 2001. First, the death of hip-hop singer Aaliyah in a plane crash. The two did not know each other well, but it seemed to Blige like some kind of warning. The other event that impacted her came from her new record executive boyfriend Kendu Isaacs, whom she met through singer and actress Queen Latifah. He told her she had to stop drinking. She said she tried to switch to wine, but “not just glasses of wine, bottles of wine” (Edwards 2006). That was not so effective, but returning to the Bible on an everyday basis helped her immensely. She now reads a chapter of Proverbs daily, per the day of the month. She said that when she was trying to get sober, there were a few that stood out, especially the thirty-seventh Psalm: “Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be envious against the workers of iniquity.” The message—do not fear or worry if other people try to hurt you, because they will—is one that she has taken to heart.

55

56

Women Icons of Popular Music

Ultimately, her relationship with Isaacs helped her bury her personal demons and stop drinking and using drugs. She told Parade magazine that Isaacs “was the ﬁrst person to ever challenge what I did: ‘Why are you drinking? Why do you hate yourself? You don’t need to be around people who tear you down. You’re beautiful, Mary.’ He was the ﬁrst man to ever tell me that” (2007). Around this time, she turned to food instead and gained some weight—which critics, of course, were quick to point out—but she took charge of herself, started exercising, and lost it. She credited Isaacs with saving her life, telling her that she was “scarred inside.” She said she remembers the night that changed everything and the impetus their relationship had on her decision. “I decided to stop drinking that night and forgive all the people who had hurt me and to forgive and love myself, because I loved him and I wanted to be true” (Parade 2007). More perhaps than any of her previous albums, No More Drama is marked most by her own songwriting, although the trademark emotional expressiveness of earlier releases remained intact. Blige says when she sings the declaration “No More Drama,” she means it. “I was in a relationship where I had a gun pulled on me and a dude tried to kill me. And in the midst of this abuse, I’d have to go and do some coke. ‘No More Drama’ is for real,” she told Rolling Stone (Edwards 2006). Sarah Rodman of the Boston Herald remarked that “Mary J. Blige may have resolved some problems in her personal life, but No More Drama is deﬁnitely misnamed. Thank goodness—because Mary without drama is like the beach without sand” (Rodman 2001). Noteworthy tracks include the lead-off “Love” and its over-the-top kiss-off and duet “Where I’ve Been” with rapper Eve. There’s even a funny, honest ode to hormones called “PMS.” Writing for the Village Voice, Barry Walters said that Blige embodied more than the pain and pleasure her songs often convey. He eloquently described her work as “riddled with luscious imperfections, her cry doesn’t fall from a pristine heaven. Instead, this grounded black angel brings home the pain of ascending a broken earth” (Walters 2001). Overall, No More Drama’s joyous moments, characterized by tracks such as the opener “Love” and the somehow hopeful autobiographical “Where I’ve Been,” showed that Blige was starting to turn away from her personal demons and to celebrate her life. Blige directly and indirectly engaged with some of the slings and arrows she suffered both at her own hands and the hands of the media throughout the album’s seventeen tracks. Throughout No More Drama, Blige thoroughly mined the experiences that brought her to that very moment of self-recognition and, ultimately, reconciliation. The title track, along with honest girl talk of “PMS,” brought Blige into what one might call Oprah Winfrey territory—sentimental, confrontationally female, yet strong and unapologetic. The title track, produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis,

My God is a God who wants me to have things. He wants me to bling. He wants me to be the hottest thing on the block.

Mary J. Blige

sampled the piano riff from the theme to the soap opera The Young and the Restless. Although the song starts off quietly, the stark beauty of the opening introduces a ﬁrst line declared in a tired voice, “So tired, tired of all this drama,” which leads to a verse packed with shifting rhythms as the piano sample continues its sad undercurrent and a drum machine kicks in. An anthemic chorus that bears the power of gospel comes alive, with Blige singing, “No one’s gonna make me hurt again.” As the song progresses, new sounds, blips, and textures are added, immediately complicating the production and adding a layer of near cacophony that mirrors life’s own obstacles and noisy interruptions. Commercially, No More Drama fared well quickly, selling over a quarter million copies in its ﬁrst week of release and coming in second place for sales behind the release of young R&B singer Aaliyah’s debut album not quite two weeks after her tragic death (Conniff 2001). The release of No More Drama also coincided with the terrorist attacks in New York City; Washington, DC; and Pennsylvania in September 2001, and some critics were quick to make connections, however accidental they might be. The connotation of her album title in the larger world context inspired Neva Chonin to write in the San Francisco Chronicle that the idea of banishing drama—personal, political, or global—is not a bad one. “A little peace would go down well these days, not only in the political and social spheres but in the commercial rap world, too” (Chonin 2001). A New Mary for the New Millennium Oddly, although No More Drama’s singles did well, MCA wanted bigger sales, so the label repackaged and re-released it in early 2002, causing No More Drama to become a double platinum album and sell 4 million copies worldwide. Blige won her second Grammy for the song “He Think I Don’t Know.” In 2003, she followed that up with Love & Life—that album marked a reunion with P. Diddy (as Sean Combs was known at that point), with whom she collaborated on producing (and writing) a number of the album’s tracks. The songs often juxtapose the ups and downs of romance and sex—the tracks with 50 Cent and Method Man cameos are particularly well-produced, said Tom Moon in Rolling Stone. Blige quickly realized that she had relied too heavily on Diddy’s opinion that her fans did not want to hear anything depressing after the heaviness of No More Drama, and so she wrote to suit him. It did not feel honest, and fans knew it. The disagreements led Blige and Combs to part ways artistically yet again. Perhaps it is not surprising that, given the content and even Love & Life’s title, Blige married Isaacs in December 2003 and became stepmother to his three children. They live in a quiet part of New Jersey, where Blige spends whatever downtime she has reading self-help books and exploring her renewed spirituality (Edwards 2006). Getting her next album, The Breakthrough, to break through took a bit of work. She told Rolling Stone that the album was ﬁnished in August 2004, a

57

58

Women Icons of Popular Music

year prior to its actual release date in 2005. This is contrary to circulating rumors that the album was ﬁnished just in time. For some reason, she said that those at Geffen (which had absorbed the label MCA) were more focused on her greatest hits collection, which they wanted to release ﬁrst. However, she got lucky when label head Jimmy Iovine heard her record and changed the plans. It was a smart move—the album hit number one and has helped to broaden her fan base considerably (Edwards 2006). The songs of The Breakthrough are like a manifesto from a woman who has fought, survived, and made a success of herself. Tracks like “Good Woman Down,” in which she says in the chorus, “You can’t hold a good woman down/You can’t hold me” testify to her strength. Indeed the humorously titled, infectious track “MJB Da MVP” is an autobiographical celebration of her trials and struggles and a biographical narration of her career, with the refrain: “I’m the soul hip-hop queen and I ain’t goin’ nowhere/but you already know me.” She thanks TV, radio, friends, family, and “most of all I wanna thank my fans, who hang through the bad times.” The pleasant, four-minute song features a guest appearance by rapper 50 Cent. She told Canada’s City News, “The Breakthrough is about triumph, about not being a victim, but being a victor. It’s about loving yourself” (City News 2006). Developments in her personal life, too, have helped ground her and give her perspective. In an interview in March 2006 with Rolling Stone, Blige told reporter Gavin Edwards about how she had changed since the earlier days of her career. He wrote, “ ‘For the ﬁrst time in my life, I’m proud of myself. I’m not an ignorant idiot jerk that don’t want to learn no more.’ She lets that sentence hang in the air, gathering the weight of all the bad decisions she has ever made, and then she laughs. ‘But I must admit—I still have my ignorant moments.’ ” When Reﬂections: A Retrospective was put out in December 2006, The Breakthrough’s lead single “Be Without You” was still on the R&B chart and had remained there for nearly a year, and Breakthrough’s ﬁfth single, “Take Me As I Am,” had stunningly taken up residence on the same chart for over four months. Throughout, Retrospective includes her big hits, her signature songs—the ones that are likely to resonate most strongly with her fans. At the same time, though, the album boasts a few previously unreleased tracks, such as “We Ride (I See The Future),” in which Blige sings “Mary ain’t mad no more,” a declaration that can easily be interpreted as the mantra for the new Mary. In “Reﬂection (I Remember)” she looks “back when pain was I all had to give” and notes her relative ignorance when she started out, “signing the contract/no guidelines.” She even reﬂects on her diva reputation, “I used to throw a ﬁt.” She told Performing Songwriter that interviewers ask her, “Remember when you were this difﬁcult person, and you were angry?” And she would

The best advice was from Chaka Khan, someone I truly love, when she told me to get out of my own way. She said that to me the first time I ever met her. I guess she’d been watching me. I didn’t understand it then, but I love her to this day for it. She was right.

Mary J. Blige

respond with a laugh, “Yeah! How many years are we gonna talk about this? Haven’t you guys discovered I’m a new person?” (Neal 2007). If it seems repetitive that she needs to keep reminding people, it is only because these types of labels have followed, haunted, and limited her throughout her career. And certainly the topic persists because she keeps the conversation alive with lyrics that acknowledge that as part of her past. Although Reﬂections features some of her greatest songs, it omits many. Some fans criticized it for being a lean collection when many of her works, speciﬁcally songs that appeared in ﬁlms and well-loved collaborations with other artists, are absent from this seventeen-track compilation. Considering the fact that she has had nine number one singles over the course of her career thus far, it is a fair critique. But then again, the term “greatest hits” or “best of” is often subjective, and sometimes artists do not always have complete control over the selections. Still, some of her best and most signature songs are included; “Be Happy,” “No More Drama,” “Not Goin’ Cry,” and “Real Love,” which might resemble a song by Anita Baker if the production did not emphasize rhythmic complexity. Also on the album is her classic “Family Affair,” along with revisions of older songs, such as the reﬂective “My Life ’06” that has a vibe recalling the best of 1970s soul music, complete with the warm tones of a Fender Rhodes piano and lyrics that give thanks to the “man above.” Deciding which songs to put on the album was not easy, she admitted. Still, she said, “I knew that what I put on there would be the songs that have been a big part of people’s lives” (Neal 2007). She said she received a letter from a young girl who was bitten on her face by a dog and that the song “No More Drama” got her through the harrowing ordeal. Similarly, the triumph-through-adversity theme surfaced as a reason to include “Not Goin’ Cry.” Blige said women tell her, “Mary this song got me out of an abusive relationship.” But for every song about personal pain, there are songs such as “You’re All I Need to Get By,” which Blige said “was a great hip-hop record, but a love song at the same time” (Neal 2007).

MISSION, MOTIVATION, PROCESS Blige started from a place of relative inexperience as a singer, songwriter, and performer, and she has learned much along the way, often at considerable emotional, personal, and ﬁnancial cost. In some ways, Blige’s career is an example of a woman who has battled the visions of what other people—namely men—have wanted for her career versus what she herself might have wanted. In the early part of her career, her path—ﬁnancial or otherwise—was somewhat laid out and deﬁned by the interests of her label. Over the course of her career, Blige has taken control over her image, slowly but surely, and remained a respected, strong, smart artist throughout her endeavors. Although she has

59

60

Women Icons of Popular Music

relied on the opinions of others, most consistently and notably Sean Combs, especially in the beginning years, in the end she learned how to make her own decisions and trusted her own instincts. Much of hip-hop is deﬁned by collaboration. Because Blige is identiﬁed primarily with that musical genre, collaboration has been key to her early and continued success. Interestingly, her partners have often come from the most unlikely places, from fellow hip-hop stars Wyclef Jean, Will.I.Am, Sean Combs, Timbaland, and Dr. Dre, to legacy artists such as Sting, U2, Eric Clapton, and George Michael, and even soulful crooners such as up-and-coming Kanye West protégé John Legend. These artists have all sung her praises, and Blige chalks up their common bond as “passion.” Of course, for her ﬁrst album, she left much of the work to her producers and trusted those around her would take care of her. At the time, she said, “I let everybody around me do everything. I just loved to sing, it was the only thing that freed me” (Neal 2007). By the time My Life came around, she had started writing and collaborating on songs but did not receive much of the credit. Back then, she was comfortable letting those in power make the decisions and handle her publishing until she ﬁgured out for herself how important publishing is. When she was structuring My Life, she was worried, because it was the ﬁrst time she was doing the writing herself. Her process of writing songs was mostly self-taught and can be described best as intuitive. She told Performing Songwriter, “It wasn’t something I learned. I was going through hell and just said, ‘You know what? I’m going put it on paper.’ I was in so much pain, I didn’t know what to do with everything that was coming out of me. As I wrote songs like ‘My Life’ I was crying” (Neal 2007). She was concerned because Sean Combs was the A&R man for her record, and her new compilation was ﬁlled with intensely personal and difﬁcult music compared to the party vibe of her ﬁrst album, but she said that “when Puff approved what I had done, it made me feel good because at the time, he was the only person I depended on as far as his ears were concerned” (Neal 2007). Usually, she writes with whoever is producing a particular track or album, and it typically takes place right in the studio as they’re recording. About the process, she said, “It has to be with someone I’ve got total chemistry with, who understands where I’m coming from, where I’ve been and what I’m doing. It has to be a person willing to have an open mind for my ideas.” She said when she wrote “Enough Cryin’” with Sean Garrett, for example, from 2005’s The Breakthrough, she had to explain her story and then he made his touches on it and added to it. “It’s not a hard thing to do, especially when it comes from a place that’s honest” (Neal 2007). She has learned the hard way, however, that fans can tell when the music is honest and when it is not. After No More Drama, which had its emotional ups and downs, she released Love & Life in 2003. When creating the album she listened to Combs, who told her that people did not want to hear any more depressing songs. “So I began to write what he said people wanted to

Mary J. Blige

hear—but I couldn’t, because I couldn’t relate to it. When it came out, people were like, ‘we don’t believe this shit’ [laughs]” (Neal 2007). Blige didn’t either. Often, songs reﬂect an artist’s place in her life, and with Blige that is no exception. Throughout her career she has struggled with the demons of drugs, alcohol, and depression. In an interview with Rolling Stone in early 2006, she told reporter Gavin Edwards that the album No More Drama declares just that. In some ways, a psychologist might say that the violence and abuse from men in her life established a pattern very early in her life—by the time she was ﬁve her father had deserted the family and she had been molested by a man whom she has not named. Drinking and using drugs were taking a toll on her physically as well as emotionally. She recalled her 1999 tour, which was sponsored by Seagram’s. She explained that every time she came offstage she drank a plastic cup full of gin and grapefruit juice. “And I would guzzle that, go to the club and have wine and whatever every single night after the show and then wonder why I couldn’t sing.” Looking back, she is almost sad. She told Rolling Stone, “I wasn’t able to give people what they needed vocally. I listen back to some of that stuff and I think, ‘What do people like about Mary J. Blige?’ ” These days, she likes herself and has found some peace, and she can appreciate even the minor ﬂaws (Edwards 2006). Sadly, it has taken her nearly ﬁfteen years in the music business, quitting drugs and alcohol, ﬁnding God, and ﬁnding love, for Blige to reach that level of self-acceptance. In many ways, No More Drama is an album that deﬁned a turning point in her writing career. The album’s best-known single, “Family Affair,” was, like so many of her other songs, a collaborative effort. The song spent six weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart at number one. It began, as she told Performing Songwriter magazine, with “just a skeleton of a track” from producer Dr. Dre. While on vacation in Aruba, her brother, Bruce Miller, wrote some lyrics for it. It had a party-going vibe, which made sense for her at the time. She was clubbing a lot then. So she sang the lyrics over the track and returned it to Dr. Dre, who gave it a thumbs-up but said that it needed a bridge. Blige took a crack at it herself, and the rest, as they say, is history. “That gave the song a little meat and potatoes. It was just celery and peanut better before I got my hands on it,” she said with a laugh. “The bridge took it to the next level, and it became a monster.” She said the song “made the entire world party and feel good” (Neal 2007). With its insinuating beat, and her coaxing the listener, “come on everybody get on up . . . come on baby just party with me/let loose and set your body free.” She goes on to preach love and tolerance, and declares “cause we celebrating No More Drama in our life.” Blige has collaborated with many artists, but her duet with Bono of U2 of the Irish rock band’s song “One” at the 2006 Grammys put her in front of a different audience—a broader one—as a performer, since she really accentuated the song’s inherent gospel and spiritual qualities. Collaborating across musical styles sent a larger philosophical message, too, especially in the wake of tragedies. She said, “Bono wrote an incredible record . . . After 9/11, and

61

62

Women Icons of Popular Music

the tsunami, and Katrina, we bond together. And then we separate once we think it’s ok. We need to remember that all races, all levels of life, gay, straight, mental, sane, we’re all one and we help each other. We’re like a chain. It’s hard when you live in a separated, selﬁsh world” (Powers 2006). Her collaborations have not only given her street cred among the hip-hop and rap community, but they have also done much to bolster her critical acclaim, broaden her audience, and show that she is a legitimate artist in her own right who has survived and remained committed to her craft and to challenging herself artistically. As for who is next on her horizon? She is vocal about wanting to work with hip-hop superstar and master producer Kanye West; he is outspoken, uncompromising, and has helped the careers of many up-and-coming singers and rappers, so her desire is unsurprising. “I just think the guy is really talented and I feel everything he does. What I love about Kanye is that he doesn’t care what people think about him. You have to respect that” (Powers 2006).

LEGACY AND OTHER INTERESTS Even in the beginning of her career, Blige participated in events that raised her proﬁle professionally, artistically, and as a humanitarian. Blige also has had her fair share of scrapes with organizations such as PETA, which has taken her to task for wearing fur. She was a participant in Charity Rap Fest in August 1992, as one of ﬁftytwo acts. The concert was declared the biggest beneﬁt of its kind to feature groups such as TLC, Arrested Development, and DJ Quik, among others. In 1995, fresh off the success of her ﬁrst two albums, Blige worked on other projects in addition to her own music. She recorded a cover of Aretha Franklin’s classic “(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman,” which was used on the soundtrack to the Fox network show New York Undercover. For the ﬁlm The Show, she contributed “Everyday It Rains.” Shortly after that, she recorded the emotional ballad “Not Goin’ Cry,” which appeared on the soundtrack to the popular ﬁlm based on the Terry McMillan novel Waiting to Exhale, with the sassy and memorable lyric “I shoulda left yo’ ass a long time ago.” Written and produced by Babyface, the song shared company on the soundtrack with Toni Braxton and Whitney Houston (who appeared in the movie), which signiﬁcantly raised her proﬁle and widened her audience. In 2001, the MAC Cosmetics company announced that Blige, Elton John, and singer Shirley Manson would be the new spokespeople for the VIVA Glam lipstick line and MAC AIDS Fund. The Viva Glam lipstick is a fundraiser that started in 1994 and at the time of Blige’s appointment had raised more than $7 million for the cosmetics company’s AIDS fund. She had previously worked with the MAC AIDS Fund and was proud to assist in raising awareness and funds for the disease. Blige has also participated in other concerts that raise funds for AIDS research; she has given her time toward beneﬁt

Mary J. Blige

events that fund music education in public schools and has performed in concerts that beneﬁt NetAid, which seeks to “educate young people about global poverty and provide opportunities for them to take concrete actions that will make a difference in the lives of the world’s poor.” She has also participated in Rap the Vote 2000, an offshoot of the Rock the Vote program in which musicians band together to increase political awareness among unregistered voters (Brown 2007, 53). Blige has also had some experience with acting during her career. She appeared as a preacher’s daughter on the Jamie Foxx Show, and in 2001 played a role in the independent ﬁlm Prison Song, which stars rapper Q-Tip. She also had the experience of acting off-Broadway in 2004, when she portrayed a woman named Sunny Jacobs in the acclaimed play The Exonerated, which tells the stories of real-life death row inmates. In December 2005, news came out that Blige had been tapped to star in the MTV ﬁlm on Nina Simone in the lead role, thanks to the ﬁlm’s screenwriter Cynthia Mort, who believed that Blige was the best woman for the part. Although some people—fans of Blige as well as fans of Simone—believed it was an insult or found her illsuited to play the “High Priestess of Soul,” the two artists do share similarities; both are outspoken, often misunderstood, deeply soulful, and introspective. In some ways, one might argue that Blige comes from Simone’s lineage, despite the fact that the latter’s songs spanned blues, jazz, gospel, and African music and Blige is the “Queen of Hip-Hop Soul.” In the course of ten albums in ﬁfteen years, Mary J. Blige has established herself as a multiplatinum-selling artist whose music has reached across genres. In 2007, she released a number one album titled Growing Pains, a sentiment that arguably could apply to much of her career. But Blige is more than just a commercially successful artist; she has overcome poverty, crime, addictions, troubled relationships, and a broken home to become an indomitable hip-hop soul icon of female power and self-healing.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY What’s the 411? MCA, 1992 My Life. MCA, 1992 Mary. MCA, 1999 No More Drama. MCA, 2001 The Breakthrough. Geffen, 2005

FURTHER READING Billboard. Album Reviews (August 7, 1992). Brown, Terrell. Hip-Hop: Mary J. Blige. Broomall, PA: Mason Crest Publishers, 2007.

63

64

Women Icons of Popular Music

Chonin, Neva. “Rap Needs to Lend Some Drama to Rock.” San Francisco Chronicle (December 20, 2001). City News Canada. “Mary J. Blige Garners Most Grammy Noms With 8.” (December 7, 2006). Available online at www.citynews.ca/news/news_5940.aspx. Conniff, Tamara. “Fans’ Tribute to Late Singer: Aaliyah No. 1.” Hollywood Reporter (September 6, 2001). Edwards, Gavin. “The Continuing Drama of Mary J. Blige.” Rolling Stone online (March 10, 2006). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/maryjblige/ articles/story/9447919/the_continuing_drama_of_mary_j_blige. George-Warren, Holly, Patricia Romanowski, and Jon Pareles (eds.). “Mary J. Blige Biography.” Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001. Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/maryjblige/ biography. Herndon, Jessica. “Mary J. Blige Looks Back.” People Weekly (January 8, 2007). Jones IV, James T. “Mary J. Blige, Streetwise to New Jack Swing.” USA Today (November 13, 1992). McAdams, Janine. “Dynamic Diva: Buzz Builds on Mary Blige; Uptown Artist Turning Heads with ‘Strictly’ Track.” Billboard (July 11, 1992). McIver, Denise L. “Music News: Blige Strikes Right Chord With Gospel Background.” Daily Variety (October 26, 1992). Neal, Chris. “Mary J. Blige: Soul Survivor.” Performing Songwriter (January/February 2007). Parade. “Mary J. Blige: You Can Find a Way to Heal.” (February 4, 2007). Available online at www.parade.com/articles/editions/2007/edition_02-04-2007/Mary_J._ Blige. Powers, Ann. “Dear Superstar: Mary J. Blige.” Blender (May 2006). Rodman, Sarah. “Mary J. Blige: No More Drama. Review.” Boston Herald (September 16, 2001). Swihart, Stewart. “What’s the 411?” All Music Guide. Available online at www .allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=ADFEAEE47817D849AA7E20C79 A3E52DBB57DF702FE5AFB86112F0456D3B82D4BBD0E4FE06BC2AB81B5 E577B066ADFF2EAC160DD9CBEF5CFEDF765D40&sql=10:wcftxqu5ld6e. Touré. “Mary. Review.” Rolling Stone online (September 2, 1999). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/maryjblige/albums/album/257650/review/ 6210379/mary. Walters, Barry. “Marked Woman.” Village Voice (September 11, 2001).

Courtesy of Photofest

Patsy Cline

66

Women Icons of Popular Music

OVERVIEW Patsy Cline is hailed as one of the most signiﬁcant female singers in country music, responsible for making possible the careers of so many other women in the music industry. Cline battled the male-dominated, good-old-boy network of the Nashville music scene in the 1950s when she started to gain attention for her singing. Noteworthy as a crossover artist for making country popular with a larger audience, Cline’s career was short but has had a tremendous impact even after her death. It can be perceived in two stages: The ﬁrst one took place while she was alive, and the second came as interest in her surged when MCA Records released a Patsy Cline box set in 1991. With the reprint of Honky Tonk Angel in 1993, “her phenomenal revival in popularity across age groups and lifestyles proves she was no mere shooting star” (Nassour 1993), and she is more popular now around the world than she was even at the peak of her career. Cline, however, was not alone. Kitty Wells, who became a star a few years before Cline, had hits in the early 1960s, and Brenda Lee, who used Cline’s producer Owen Bradley, also played a part in bringing country music to pop audiences. Cline, though, has endured as the symbol of crossover success, partly because of her early, tragic death, which occurred just as she was starting to come into her own, and partly because of her vocal talent. Cline’s voice conveyed a knowing sadness in much the same way Billie Holiday infused her own sense of sorrow into her singing. Somehow, though, Cline has transcended her short career and taken on a nearly mythic tragedy, and unfortunate circumstance did not just surround her death. Her life was difﬁcult, and she encountered many challenges when it came to her career, her image, and ownership of her music. Cline’s personality was big and bold: She was outspoken and unafraid to seek success. Yet Cline spent much of the early part of her career ﬁghting against other people’s ideas of what she should record and how she should sound. For example, she initially disregarded and did not want to record songs that would make her a big star. Cline was a trailblazer—prior to her breakthrough, women in country music were largely relegated to “window dressing” roles. As described by Dottie West, a contemporary singer and friend of Cline’s, “Patsy could be soft and feminine, but she could hold her own against any man. It was common knowledge that you didn’t mess with ‘the Cline.’ If you kicked her, she’d kick right back” (Nassour 1993, xi). In the 1950s and early 1960s, Cline was an anomaly in American culture and especially the music business—strong, sexy, somewhat reckless with her personal life, and ﬁercely determined to become a famous singer no matter what the cost, personal or professional. Cline’s voice was smooth and full. She was unique because she could embody the song and truly inhabit it. Although she sang many songs that were written by other people, from Hank Williams to Willie Nelson to countless

Patsy Cline

67

others, those pieces she popularized have become identiﬁed with her and not the composer. Cline is Patsy didn’t let nobody tell known for many songs, most notably her ﬁrst hit her what to do. She done what “Walkin’ After Midnight” as well as “I Fall to Pieces,” she felt, and if a man got in “Crazy,” and “She’s Got You.” Most of her albums her way she let ’em know they appeared on the Billboard charts posthumously. The couldn’t stand there. ﬁrst to appear was 1963’s Patsy Cline Showcase, —Loretta Lynn which hit the seventy-three slot on the Pop Albums chart. The Patsy Cline Story, also released in the same year, hit seventy-four on the pop chart and nine on the country album chart. After Patsy Cline’s Greatest Hits peaked at seventeen on the country chart in 1967, time passed before any of her records popped up again. In 1980 Always hit twenty-seven on the country chart, Greatest Hits went to eight in 1982, and ﬁnally Sweet Dreams went to six on the country chart in 1985. After that point none of her records reached the top ten on any chart. Due to the nature of the time in which she came to fame and the nature of Nashville, Cline was more known to audiences through her singles than albums. For instance, “Walkin’ After Midnight” hit number two on the country singles chart and twelve on the pop singles chart in 1957. Subsequent hits like “A Poor Man’s Roses (Or a Rich Man’s Gold),” which hit number fourteen on the country chart, and most of her other singles afterward, such as “Crazy,” “I Fall to Pieces,” “Imagine That,” and “She’s Got You,” all took up signiﬁcant slots on various charts, such as Adult Contemporary, pop singles, or country singles. The year 1961 was especially remarkable—“I Fall to Pieces” went to number one on the country singles chart, number six on the Adult Contemporary chart, and number twelve on the pop singles chart all in the same year. At the time, it was unusual for an artist to achieve positions on several charts simultaneously. Cline never received any Grammy Awards or any Country Music Association Awards during her lifetime, but ironically, Loretta Lynn received one for Album of the Year in 1977 with I Remember Patsy. Patsy Cline’s records have arguably sold more than what the Recording Industry Association of American (RIAA) database suggests because a label must pay to have its sales audited. One source alleges that Greatest Hits sold 6 million copies, and another suggests 8 million (Hazen and Freeman 1999, foreword). The Patsy Cline Collection, released in October 1991, was on the charts for over eight years. It was certiﬁed gold and hailed by many critics for its comprehensiveness; Heartaches (1985) was certiﬁed gold in 1994; and Patsy Cline Sings Songs of Love (1995) was certiﬁed gold in 2006. A long-form video, The Real Patsy Cline, received platinum certiﬁcation in 1994. In 1992 Cline received a Grammy Awards Recording Hall of Fame induction for “Crazy,” and in 1993 a commemorative stamp was issued. Her accomplishments and her legacy are all the more remarkable considering only three albums of her were released during her lifetime: Patsy Cline (August 1957), Showcase with the Jordanaires (November 1961), and Sentimentally Yours (August 1962).

68

Women Icons of Popular Music

EARLY YEARS

Patsy was born for show business. Her life was singing. When you saw her perform, you knew that nobody else came close. . . . She had a charisma that was equal to Elvis or Johnny Cash.

Cline’s father, Samuel Lawrence Hensley, met her mother Hilda when he was forty years old and she was thirteen. He was a widower whose ﬁrst wife, Wynona Jones, had died of pneumonia in 1927 leaving two children, Randolph and Tempie Glenn. Shortly thereafter he and Hilda met at a Sunday school pic—Dottie West nic. They married two years later, in 1929. The family moved around when Cline was young. She was born Virginia Patterson Hensley and was referred to as Ginny as a child. She had a younger brother Samuel, who was called John, and a sister Sylvia Mae. When Cline was in the eighth grade, the family ﬁnally settled in a modest, working-class neighborhood near Winchester, Virginia. Her parents would often argue because her father would leave for periods of time against her mother’s wishes to ﬁnd work. By some family accounts, her father also had a drinking problem. Her mother has often been asked about how Cline got involved or interested in country music. “It must have been in her blood. She didn’t take after me or her daddy. Patsy’s love of music accounted for her drive to become a singer,” she said (Nassour 1993, 5). The child actress and singing sensation Shirley Temple was one of Cline’s idols growing up, but singing did not immediately enter into the picture. At a very young age Cline asked for dancing lessons, but the family could not afford them. However, to everyone’s surprise, she won ﬁrst place in a dance contest. After her dance success, she started asking to play the piano. Finally, they bought her one when she was seven years old. Her mother says that when she took her daughter for lessons, it quickly became apparent that she could play by ear. The piano teacher told her mother, “She’s got a natural gift. You’ll be wasting your money. I don’t think I could teach her to play” (7). From that point on Cline was glued to the radio and faithfully listened to the Grand Ole Opry, always telling her mother that she wanted to be a singer like Roy Acuff or Maybelle Carter or anyone else she heard and admired. From a young age, she was driven to be a star. She sang in church choir and even did duets of gospel and religious songs with her mother. Her family, parents, friends, and neighbors kept reminding her how difﬁcult it would be to make it as a country music star, but Cline was undeterred. In fact, it seemed to motivate her even more. It was sheer determination and fearlessness that drove her into the ofﬁce of the local radio station, WINC, to see deejay Joltin’ Jim McCoy, whose band the Melody Playboys had a live show on Saturday mornings. Cline loved the show, and one morning when she was fourteen she got dressed up, went over to the studio, and asked to see McCoy, unannounced. She boldly told him that she was good enough to be on the radio and asked for a chance to

Patsy Cline

sing without pay. Despite her naiveté—she was green and ungroomed as far as her vocal talent was concerned—he was taken with her gumption and her raw talent, so she became a regular with the group. It also helped that she looked older than she was. Cline was savvy even from a young age and asked for advice from people whenever she encountered a new situation, then took it. Perhaps on some level Cline knew that she ultimately needed to depend on herself to succeed. Her parents’ marriage was starting to fall apart. Her father left the family when she was about ﬁfteen, in 1947. Later, she intimated to others that he “tried something with her one night when he was drunk” (Nassour 1993, 15). His departure put a tremendous ﬁnancial strain on the family. Her mother, with whom she was extremely close, was a seamstress but did not earn enough to support the family. Cline quit high school as a sophomore to work full-time, ﬁrst at a poultry factory and then as a waitress at the soda fountain in Gaunt’s Drug Store. Her father never lived long enough to hear her sing professionally, although she did see him brieﬂy before he died in December 1956. Through all this hard work she remained determined and driven to succeed. She sent a letter to the Grand Ole Opry to ask for an audition, and a few weeks later she received a request for a recording and photograph. Through the kindness of people she knew—a local photographer and the owner of a record store—she put together a package and sent it off to the Opry. In the meantime, she sought out Wally Fowler, who ran a program that aired after the Opry on Sunday nights and was known for being a “pioneer of the gospel caravans” (Nassour 1993, 18). Her boldness got her a few minutes with him to audition. Once again, as with her local radio station deejay, Fowler was taken aback by her talent and arranged for an audition with WSM Radio and the Opry ofﬁcials. While she was in Nashville she met Roy Acuff, and he asked her to sing a song with him on his noontime show. Ofﬁcials tried to get her to remain in town long enough to sing in front of more people at the organization, but the family had to leave. They traveled in a borrowed car and could not afford to stay over. Back home Cline kept singing at church socials, carnivals, parties, and anywhere anyone would hire her. Gradually, she gained a name for herself in the region and, by some accounts, a reputation for her “inappropriate” attire and her unladylike mouth: Cline could swear like a sailor, as they say, and then turn on the charm whenever necessary. Some of the men she ﬂirted with started to call her the “honky tonky angel” (Nassour 1993, 27). In 1951, by the time she was nineteen, she was a regular performer with the house band at George and Katherine Frye’s Rainbow Inn just outside of Winchester. Shortly thereafter, in 1952, she met a Nashville guitarist named Clarence William Peer who had connections in country music. Peer suggested she change her name to Patsy. He also sacriﬁced a lot, became enamored of her (despite his own marriage and family), and became her manager. Peer tried hard to get her into Nashville, sending out demo tapes and lobbying on her behalf. Cline, however,

69

70

Women Icons of Popular Music

did not initially return his affection even though she spent much time with him. Instead, she married Gerald Cline, a man nearly ten years her senior who, according to those close to her, had a womanizing past and nefarious, untrustworthy ways. They met in October 1952 and were married the following March. It seemed as though Cline thought marrying him would help give her some economic stability while she pursued her career, but their marriage was short-lived—Gerald was overprotective and unsupportive. He wanted her at home, not on stage. He also followed Cline and Peer nearly everywhere they went; he suspected their relationship was more than professional, and he was increasingly correct in his suspicions. Finally, Peer’s efforts to assist Cline paid off. Her tapes wound up in the hands of William McCall, president of Four-Star Records. Peer lobbied McCall to sign Patsy Cline and Bill Peer and the Melody Makers. On September 30, 1954, just after she had turned twenty-two, she signed a two-year contract. Cline, overcome with excitement, signed it without reading all the ﬁne print, which turned out to be a costly error. Her royalties were only a little over 2 percent, which after paying for her recordings and the musicians did not amount to much. Under a deal McCall arranged with A&R rep Paul Cohen at Decca Records, Cline recorded some demos in Nashville. Cohen thought from the start that Cline could have a “pop sound” but still consulted everyone on his roster except her chief rival, Kitty Wells. Finally, they settled on the pop-leaning producer Owen Bradley, and she recorded four songs, including “I Don’t Wanna,” “I Love You Honey,” “I Cried All the Way to the Altar,” and “Come On In,” the latter of which often became her opening number in live performances. Cohen, however, was unhappy with the results and initially shelved the recording. During this early phase of her recording career, the sessions involved her singing music that ranged from rockabilly to tearjerker ballads. She had recorded seventeen singles between 1955 and 1960, but “I Love You Honey” and “Come On In” were the only two songs from that Decca Nashville session that turned into singles, though they were released later, in February 1956. The ﬁrst batch of her singles was released in mid-1955, including “A Church, A Courtroom and then Goodbye” and “Honky Tonk Merry-Go-Round.” Both songs ironically mirrored events in her life. She made her Opry debut in June 1955, too, with the former song. Later that year, in the fall, she started appearing on a live entertainment program called Town and Country Jamboree based in Washington, DC, as well as making guest appearances on radio shows. Her performances on Town and Country Jamboree gave her a slowly growing but devoted regional following. In fall 1955, she told Peer (who had divorced his wife that summer) that she was leaving the band for good, that she needed to focus on her career, which meant his tenure as her manager was over, too. Peer was heartbroken. They did not speak for a while but eventually reconciled. By the following year, Cline’s marriage was deteriorating and she and Gerald separated.

Patsy Cline

CAREER PATH Getting the Big Break and Finally Finding Love: 1956–1957 Cline’s personal life complicated her professional life and vice versa consistently throughout her career, perhaps due to the fact that her personality was unusually outgoing and uncompromising when compared with other women of her era, and especially compared to Southern women. Her magnanimous personality, love of life, and devotion toward singing often took her to extreme places, extreme people, and extreme situations. But when she met Charlie Dick in April 1956, it sealed the fate of her marriage to Gerald. Cline wrote in letters to a friend that in June 1955 she had left Gerald for six months, although in November they tried to make it work. She writes that some of the problems were that she was his third wife, and he was about ten years her senior and did not want children, although at the time her extramarital interests certainly complicated the story, too. Perhaps these pieces of information were too thorny and/or embarrassing to admit, which may explain why she did not divulge her relations with Peer to her friend. Dick, though, had a bit of a wild reputation as a ladies’ man. He pursued her persistently, and once they started spending time together they were smitten with each other. His brother, Mel recalled that Charlie and Patsy were such a good ﬁt because “they were always on the go and looking for excitement” (Nassour 1993, 84). She was getting frustrated with her career, though—things were not happening quickly enough. Her contract indebted her to Decca and McCall, but she was not satisﬁed with what they were doing or what they were not doing. She had a recording session in which she did takes on the rockabilly song “Stop, Look and Listen,” a weepy ballad called “I’ve Loved and Lost Again,” and two gospel numbers that were not released during her lifetime. Often, she would be so moved by the music and so immersed in the performance that she would end up in tears afterward. But still, she was restless and felt as though something was wrong. One of the musicians present for that session in April 1956 said that she was upset. Musician Teddy Wilburn recalled her saying “Everybody knows what I should and shouldn’t do, but nobody listens to me. It’s all in the material and I ain’t got no decent material” (Nassour 1993, 84). Still, Decca released the rockabilly song and the weeper on July 8, and she was able to debut the record on a radio program that was part of what the Opry carried on the NBC radio network. That summer, she went to Los Angeles to sing on another program and promote her record. In late fall, after receiving no response from deejays and suffering minimal sales of her albums, she took some initiative and had Charlie drive her to New York to audition for Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts. She did not receive a slot—someone she thought less talented, George Hamilton IV, did. It enraged her.

71

72

Women Icons of Popular Music

When she was in California, she met struggling songwriter Donn Hecht, which changed everything about her career. McCall had Hecht listen to Cline’s recordings and complained that she had “bombed” every time he spent money on putting her records out (Nassour 1993, 95) Her contract was about to expire, and McCall was not sure whether or not he should renew her. As crass as it may sound, McCall had spent thousands on her and was not seeing a return on his investment, but he was not quite ready to say goodbye to her. McCall asked for Hecht’s opinion, who told him something similar to what Cline had been saying: The material was not right. Hecht told McCall that she was not a country singer, that she should not be singing hillbilly music, but that he should keep her. So McCall asked him to write a song for Cline and make it a hit. Hecht wrote “Walkin’ After Midnight.” Ironically, when McCall called Cline and played the demo over the phone with a singer, she reportedly hated it and refused to record it. But because she was contractually obligated, she did. They continued to argue during the production process; she said it was a pop song and reiterated that everyone kept pushing her on material that she had no say in and then blamed her when it didn’t work out. Cline and Hecht worked out a deal with McCall: If he let her pick the B-side of the record, he would release the songs back to back. If his pick went over well, she had to promise that she would not bother him about material choice again; if both selections were failures, they would part company (Nassour 1993, 98–99). Before she ﬁnished recording though, she had to ask for money. McCall advanced her some cash in exchange for a one-year extension of her contract, which was set to expire in September 1957. Cline was locked in through September 1958. Cline’s ﬁnancial situation only got worse as they recorded a handful of songs in fall 1956 and Christmas approached. Broke again, she called McCall, who advanced her more money and tacked on two more years, moving the contract expiration date to September 1960 (Nassour 1993, 90–100). Cline’s career shows us how difﬁcult it was to be a recording artist in an era when sales were measured more in terms of hit singles than in artistic development over the course of several albums and many years. It also shows us how difﬁcult it was to be a female artist who was trying to be true to herself but also become successful. Finally, Cline broke through. She got her big break when she sang “Walkin’ After Midnight” on the Arthur Godfrey Talent Scouts program in 1957, which was her national network television debut. Godfrey had seen her appearance on the Town and Country Jamboree around the holidays in 1956 and wanted her to appear on his show. She was not excited about performing the song; she may have buried it among roughly thirty other songs until someone in Godfrey’s ofﬁce pulled it out and requested she sing it because of its potential for broad appeal. But she performed her heart out, and the audience responded with thunderous applause that brought her to tears. Godfrey asked her to sing another song, so she got her wish for country material, singing Hank Williams’ song “Your Cheatin’ Heart” much to the audience’s delight.

Patsy Cline

She was dubbed an overnight sensation, orders poured into the label for her single, and she began to appear on Godfrey’s show regularly. “Walkin’ After Midnight” was the only certiﬁed hit she had of those seventeen singles she recorded between 1955 and 1960. Around this time, when she started to make it and become recognized, she reportedly said, “Damn, it’s about time, I’ve paid my dues” (Nassour 1993, x). Riding High On the Charts and Trying to Find Her Way: 1957–1960 The year 1957 was good for her personally, too. In January 1957, soon after she appeared on television, Gerald Cline ﬁled for divorce, which was granted in March. Soon after, Charlie proposed. Cline married Charlie Dick on September 15, 1957, at her mother’s home in Winchester. Although they were in love, when they fought they fought hard; he reportedly got violent and would sometimes physically abuse her, so their relationship was far from perfect. In letters to Treva Miller, Cline admitted, “I’ve never loved a man so much in my life. He is my life, my world, just my everything” (Hazen and Freeman 1999, 163). Within a few months, Cline was pregnant and daughter Julie Dick was born August 25, 1958. Two and a half years later Cline had a son, Randy Dick, on January 22, 1961. Unfortunately, Charlie had a nasty streak, drank a lot, and according to some of Cline’s conﬁdants, he sometimes ﬂirted with other women while they were married. Although much of the press and writing about her talked about her bold and occasionally uncouth ways, Cline was also a traditional, warmhearted country girl. She was deeply devoted to her children and Charlie, despite how complicated they made her life and regardless of whatever reservations Charlie may have ultimately had about his wife being on the road so frequently. Still, though, Cline was not happy with Godfrey’s show, because they saw a future for her with pop, blues, and jazz, which she fought against. She wanted to dress in her country-western gear and let loose the occasional yodel. Her stubbornness ultimately got her ﬁred, so she left New York and went back home. There, she begged for her old slot back at Town and Country Jamboree, from which she had also been ﬁred when she overslept and failed to show up for a rehearsal. Eventually, she was hired back. She began making personal appearances and singing on variety television programs and in large venues across the country, such as state fairs. Soon, she began to be seen as a sex symbol and went from traditional country-western attire to clothing her full ﬁgure in gold and silver lamé clothing that ﬁt tight around the hips, high heels, and skirts a little bit shorter than what most women wore. “It kind of went with her. It was the full package,” said Minnie Pearl of Cline’s appeal (Nassour 1993, 125). In April 1957, TV Guide wrote a story about her rise, and it seemed that fame, something she sought so desperately, was overwhelming her. “I’m beginning to wonder if I can keep up with all this,” she said (TV Guide 1957).

73

74

Women Icons of Popular Music

In general, though, Cline’s career improved once she had a hit, regardless of the arguments and creative differences between her and McCall, Godfrey, or anyone else who had a say in the direction of her career. When “Walkin’ After Midnight” was released in February 1957 she had both a pop and country hit on her —Owen Bradley hands; in just a couple of weeks it sold 200,000 copies (Hazen and Freeman 1999, 146). In all, it spent nineteen consecutive weeks on the Billboard country charts and sixteen on the pop chart, outselling the Platters, Bill Haley, and Jerry Lewis. Writing about the song years later in the Washington Post, critic Geoffrey Himes attested to the song’s longevity when compared to other songs from 1957 with the words, “[I]t refuses to be pinned down to a particular style; it combines the emotional transparency of country, the robust tonality of Tin Pan Alley pop and a hint of gritty R&B into a sound that was Cline’s alone” (November 15, 1991). Himes described Cline’s vocal as “strutting” into the song after Don Helms’s honky-tonk-sounding steel guitar. “She slides into the ﬂatted blues note, jumps on the syncopated swing accents and promises her departed lover that she won’t be sitting at home waiting for him; she’ll be out looking for him” (Himes 1991). Owen Bradley must have sensed that the lyrics, too, would ultimately resonate with Cline, as the narrator evokes a person who proactively takes charge of her affairs, personal or otherwise. Cline also appeared on the Grand Ole Opry again, subsequent to the release of “Walkin’” and once again audiences loved her. After Connie Gay of Town and Country Jamboree disparaged her on television, Cline decided not to agree to his terms for a contract to appear on the show; in her letters to Treva Miller, she gave the impression that Gay wanted to pay her less than union scale and that he seemed ungrateful about the fact that her performances raised the show’s proﬁle. There was speculation that she would appear on the Steve Allen, Art Linkletter, Perry Como, and Ed Sullivan shows, but none of those plans came to fruition, which underscores the idea that Cline’s career was as much about near-misses as it was about hard work in its small steps toward success. She started recording again in late spring, with about a half dozen songs. Decca also released a follow-up record to “Walkin’ ” called “Today, Tomorrow and Forever,” with “Try Again” on the ﬂip side. She did some touring, sharing the bill with Brenda Lee and Porter Wagoner. The only other song of hers to chart in 1957 after “Walkin’” was “A Poor Man’s Roses (Or a Rich Man’s Gold),” which reached number fourteen on the country singles chart and was on the ﬂipside to “Walkin’ After Midnight.” However, in 1957 she received four awards for Most Promising Female Country Artist, from Cash Box, Billboard, Juke Box, and Jamboree magazines. Critics were taking notice. Despite how busy she was, Cline’s limiting contract with Four-Star inﬂuenced what she could record and with whom she could work. She felt as though the

You wouldn’t have to tell Patsy anything about this women’s lib business. She could’ve taught them a thing or two.

Patsy Cline

contract was keeping her from really seeing the ﬁnancial fruits of her labor. Cline groused about not having control over her material and her career and claimed McCall was a bastard who was making a lot of money off her. Even though she had a hit, by November of 1957, newly married, she was as broke as ever. After all her expenses were deducted, she received very little from royalties. Her proﬁle continued to rise, but it would be several years before she had another signiﬁcant hit, crossover or otherwise. Sassy and Strong Women of the South: The Dixie Chicks Live Cline’s Legacy Since 1998, the country trio the Dixie Chicks boasted multiplatinum sales and a strong country following, but in March 2003 they gained even more attention when singer Natalie Maines expressed the group’s displeasure with the war in Iraq, telling an audience in London that they were ashamed to be from Texas because President Bush was from there, too. Although Maines later apologized, saying she should have criticized the war, many country music stations banned them and accused them of being unpatriotic, perhaps the biggest infraction a country musician can commit. A publicity campaign was mounted, and the controversy exposed them to a larger audience and illustrated exactly how much of an international crossover pop success the Chicks had become; plus, mainstream audiences had become much more sophisticated about country music, and the band’s misgivings about current affairs had become more mainstream. The experience even inspired a documentary called Shut Up and Sing. Initially, Home’s sales suffered; in the first full week following the flap, sales dropped 43 percent to 72,000 copies, but it stayed the number one country album for the seventeenth week in a row. Their 2006 follow-up Taking the Long Way debuted at number one, sold more than 500,000 copies in its first week, and won four Grammys, including Record and Album of the Year. The album’s anthemic winner, “Not Ready to Make Nice,” is a pointed jab at their critics. In the chorus, they sing, “I’m not ready to make nice/I’m not ready to back down.” The Chicks share more than just country crossover status with the likes of Patsy Cline and Dolly Parton, exceedingly honest women even when it is unpopular. Cline and Parton were trailblazers, and the Dixie Chicks, as part of that legacy, set new standards for modern, country-based pop music.

The late 1950s can be characterized by country music suffering somewhat in sales and popularity against the rising popularity of rock and roll. Cline continued to work during her pregnancy with her ﬁrst child, Julie, throughout 1958. She had four recording sessions, which yielded the single “Walkin’ Dream,” released toward the end of the year with “Stop the World” on the ﬂipside.

75

76

Women Icons of Popular Music

The folks at Decca told her it was selling well, but Cline was hoping it would chart well, which it did not. Also, “Let the Teardrops Fall” and “Never No More” came from these recordings, but none of the songs had much impact. She toured a bit and played in Nashville, Minnesota, and even Hawaii and continued to appear on Arthur Godfrey’s show and the Ozark Jubilee. In a letter to her fans, she said she recorded the song “Just Out of Reach” with the Anita Kerr singers, known for their backup work for Brenda Lee, and entreated her fans to buy her records so she could “put some shoes or boots on this youngin,” referring to her unborn child (Hazen and Freeman 1999, 212). In December of that year, Decca released her 1956 recording of the song “Dear God,” but it failed to connect with audiences. She described it as her “ﬁrst real religious record” (Hazen and Freeman 1999, 224). After Julie was born, Cline was prepared to start singing and working again, but the gigs were not coming and the bills were rising. After Julie’s birth, though, Cline’s workload didn’t increase signiﬁcantly. In her letters to Miller she described how she was waiting until her contract was set to expire in May 1959—but she was mistaken, as it did not expire until 1960. The time leading up to Julie’s birth and shortly thereafter, until the contract expiration, was transitional for Cline. In the early part of 1959, she slowly resumed working and started recording with producer Owen Bradley using stereo technology for the ﬁrst time. It marked the ﬁrst time the Jordanaires started appearing regularly on her songs with backing vocals. Biographer Margaret Jones said that their “low chords and soft spiritual sound counterpointed Patsy’s vocal power and broad range” (1994, 167). When she recorded “Yes I Understand,” she used the new technique of overdubbing vocals. That song, along with “Cry Not For Me,” was released in February 1959. The work did not result in a big hit, but it was an important step in the formulation of the orchestrated pop sound that would dominate her later hit recordings. In late summer, the Clines moved to Nashville to be in the heart of the country music scene—a move that seems almost ironic in hindsight—and she sought out a manager in the form of Randy Hughes. Cline wanted to come back into the country music business. In a letter to Miller in January 1959— the last one published—Cline wrote that Bradley wanted to offer her 6 percent on any terms that she wanted, such as the right to choose her material. Great Change and Great Success, Followed by Great Tragedy: 1960–1963 Most authors, journalists, and music critics look favorably on Cline as they describe the terms of her arrangement with Four-Star. In its online biography of Cline, All Music Guide described her arrangement as one that exploited her talent and limited her to recording songs from only one publishing company. In those days, though, that situation was not unusual. Music publishers owned the artists who signed with them. Once her Four-Star contract was up, she would be able to (and did) select material that was better for her and better

Patsy Cline

for her ﬁnances, thanks to the help of Owen Bradley. Cline’s return to musical form was serendipitous, because Bradley had been promoted to A&R head at Decca in spring 1958. During 1959 and 1960, when she was trying to regain her footing after all of these changes—label, managers, childbirth—her pay was low and she traveled long, grueling hours with other Nashville musicians, most of whom were men. She persevered because Hughes kept his word and kept her busy working. Cline also appeared regularly on the Ozark Jubilee, which was known as Jubilee U.S.A., from 1959 to September 1960. These times were difﬁcult, as in the earlier years of her career, but complicated in new ways. After the birth of Julie, though, Cline’s marriage got rockier, and she suffered from depression. Her weight ﬂuctuated frequently and it was not uncommon for her to go on a crash diet (Jones 1994, 185). It was also not uncommon for her, or other Nashville musicians at this time, to take amphetamines, or speed, to endure the rigors of traveling and performing. Many of those television-performance agreements allowed her to pick her own material, so despite the fact that the records that Four-Star put out in 1959 did not chart, it is arguable that Cline was choosing the likes of Neal Sedaka, Connie Francis, and country standards such as “Lovesick Blues” because she was open to trying a good song, no matter what the genre. Her ﬁnal Four-Star session took place in January 1960, and probably as a concession to Cline, Bradley let her do country tunes. She recorded the Tin Pan alley standard that Hank Williams popularized, “Lovesick Blues,” along with several other tracks: “How Can I Face Tomorrow?,” “Crazy Dreams,” and “There He Goes.” In April 1960, when she learned she was pregnant again, Cline was deeply ambivalent about the news, unhappy with her marriage to Charlie (who at this point was having affairs), and worried about the possible negative impressions her pregnancy would have on her career. That summer, however, she signed a three-year contract with a two-year option with Decca; she had developed a sense of trust with Bradley. In November 1960 she recorded “I Fall to Pieces,” which was out for at least six months before it reached any signiﬁcant position on the charts. At ﬁrst Cline thought the tune, written by Harlan Howard, was damaged goods, or at least bad luck. She also resisted recording the bluesy, sad number because she did not see herself as a balladeer. Many other artists had also refused to sing it, from various popular male singers of the day to Brenda Lee. Surprisingly, “I Fall to Pieces” was one of the ﬁrst few country-pop crossovers during this second, newly invigorated stage of her career. Bradley managed a mix of vocal backup that were de rigueur for pop recordings of the time, but lest we forget Cline was a country singer at heart, he allowed a steel guitar to surface, too. There is irony in the way Cline delivered the opening line—she sings “I Fall to Pieces,” but she controls those words so carefully that you almost cannot believe her, except for a slight hesitation when she

77

78

Women Icons of Popular Music

sings the word “fall.” The song does not contain much in the way of verses, but each time she repeats the title phrase, it’s rendered slightly differently. By the end of the song, the shifts are subtle but signiﬁcant, and it feels as though she is reconsidering the idea with each rendering. Cline continued to work with Bradley, who helped create some beautiful orchestral arrangements and enlisted backup vocalists The Jordanaires, who had also lent their signature harmonies to Elvis Presley’s early RCA recordings. His inﬂuence gave her work a pop sensibility. With Bradley, Cline worked hard to develop a ballad style. It is no accident, then, that her ﬁnal hits were country music torch songs—deeply emotional, heart-tugging ballads. Because Nashville was rife with excellent musicians who knew each other, Cline had the best of the city’s session players at her disposal—Hank Garland on guitar, Floyd Cramer on piano, and Buddy Harmon on drums. Throughout these sessions and despite her success, when Cline was initially presented with tunes such as “I Fall to Pieces,” “Crazy,” and “Leavin’ On Your Mind,” she kept insisting they were pop songs. But Bradley kept encouraging her to sing them in her own style. Of course, she did just that. “I Fall to Pieces” was released shortly after the birth of her second child, Allen Randolph, on January 30. After extensive employment of independent promoters, it made a modest appearance on the Billboard charts in April, but then reached number one in August on the country chart and slowly climbed up the pop chart to reach number twelve in September. Cline was able to fend off creditors and pay for a car, a refrigerator, and other amenities in cash. With her ﬁrst royalty check, she bought her mother a new refrigerator and stove; she later bought her a new Cadillac. Cline was so grateful that she bought a small gift for Howard, thanking him for the wonderful song. Cline’s hard work, constant promotion, and performances behind the song paid off. Much about Cline’s life has become the stuff of popular music mythology. Sometime after the success of “I Fall to Pieces” she had a hunch that she was going to be involved in a car accident. In April 1961, she drew up a will and left nearly everything to her mother, including the care of her two children. To her husband, she left a few material possessions, including her car, some furniture, a record player and albums, and a television set. Her prediction came true. She was driving with a friend in the rain in Nashville on June 14 and was thrown through the windshield. She needed major reconstructive plastic surgery. This severe car accident produced a spiritual reawakening in Cline, who believed that she had seen Jesus and that he had told her that it was not her time yet, there was still work for her to do. The accident nearly killed her and left her with visible scars on her head and her face. Friends reported that she seemed less bawdy, more mellow and grateful after the accident. Oddly, the accident brought out the best in her husband Charlie, who tended her at her hospital bedside. Once it was clear that she was on the mend, radio deejays started playing “I Fall to Pieces” more frequently, as a goofy homage. She was

Patsy Cline

79

ﬂooded with visitors, cards, letters, ﬂowers, and wellwishers. She made an appearance at the Opry in a Patsy Cline’s music will live wheelchair during the week she came home from the forever because she sang from hospital in July and returned to the Opry on crutches the heart, she lived the words for her singing debut shortly afterward. of her songs. —country singer Trisha Part of the Patsy Cline mythology includes the nowYearwood legendary stories about the songs she recorded, how they were recorded, and how those songs were chosen. For example, “Crazy,” written by Willie Nelson, was recorded in October 1961, not too long after her car accident. One story says that she initially hated the song; other stories say that she loved it instantly. She reportedly spent about four hours in the studio on that song, which was unusual for those days; she could not hit the high notes because of pain in a broken rib. The musicians recorded it, and then a couple of weeks later Cline returned to the studio after resting and did many takes of the song to get it just right. “Crazy” is rather unusual for a country song—it features more than three chords and certainly Bradley’s treatment turned it into a swooning, emotionally charged ballad. It has been noted that Bradley’s guidance transformed Nelson’s song for Cline. Nelson had a difﬁcult time ﬁnding the right singer for it; Bradley was charged with making Cline a household word in all demographic markets but especially New York. That song did the trick. When “Crazy” was released on October 16, it went to number two on the Adult Contemporary chart and number nine on the pop singles chart. Cline’s career was at its high in 1961 and 1962 when her recordings of “Crazy” and “She’s Got You” became country hits and pop hits. At this point much of her material was provided by the likes of Willie Nelson, Hank Cochran, and Harlan Howard, and she had recorded versions of songs popularized by Frank Sinatra and Gene Autry. She, along with other Nashville and country music notables including Bill Monroe, Minnie Pearl, and Jim Reeves, appeared at Carnegie Hall for the Opry’s debut as a beneﬁt concert in November 1961. Although country music at Carnegie Hall was not unprecedented, it was still remarkable. Just in time for her Carnegie Hall appearance, Decca released Patsy Cline Showcase on November 27, 1961. Cline was happy with her hits and wanted to keep them coming, for the sake of her children— everything she did was for them. By the end of the year, she was exhausted but had already recorded her next hit, “She’s Got You,” which was released in January 1962 and hit number fourteen in February. Cline spent about fourteen months as the main female vocalist for The Johnny Cash Show, but she also traveled for shows on the road in the East, Midwest, and Southwest. She also performed at the Hollywood Bowl that year—an accomplishment for a female singer—and had a string of dates in Las Vegas. She was making enough money so that there was some left over to lend to friends such as Loretta Lynn for groceries or rent. (She and Lynn were both somewhat iconoclastic for their time, and they got along well.) Because of

80

Women Icons of Popular Music

Cline’s success, her husband Charlie even quit his print shop job, which irritated her, and she bitingly referred to him as “Mr. Patsy Cline.” Around this time, she had an on-again, off-again affair with her manager Hughes, who was extremely good to her and good for her, as well as other ﬂings on the road. Five other country hits were released that year, and Cline was arguably at the height of her career. After spending all of 1962 touring, she ﬁnally bought her dream house. During the summer of 1962, however, she unexpectedly gave friend Dottie West her scrapbooks, telling her that she never thought she’d live to be thirty. She was not quite accurate. She also told June Carter that month that she knew she was going to die soon and gave Carter instructions about what to do with her body and how she wanted her children raised. There are other eerie facts about her death; for instance, “Leavin’ On Your Mind,” was released in January 1963, making it the last single before her death. Cline was killed in a plane crash on March 5, 1963; Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins, and Randy Hughes were also in the plane. The crash took place somewhere off Highway 70 about three miles west of Camden, Tennessee. The entertainers— all Opry stars—were on their way from Kansas City, where they had performed at a beneﬁt concert, to Nashville. The last album she recorded, The Patsy Cline Story, was released posthumously in June 1963. It is loaded with Bradley’s string arrangements and contains pop songs such as “Does Your Heart Beat for Me?” along with a Hensley family favorite, “Bill Bailey.” Her version of “Sweet Dreams” was recorded in early February, a month before she died in a plane crash at the age of thirty; the song had already been a hit three times over by other artists.

MISSION, MOTIVATION, PROCESS Cline entered the male-dominated world of Nashville and emerged strong, swearing, sassy and seductive. Her friend and fellow country singer Dottie West described the time as challenging for women. “The women singers didn’t have the clout or the money-making potential they do today. . . . We were mainly used for window dressing. Patsy broke the boundaries. Her massive appeal proved women, without men by their side, could consistently sell records and draw audiences” (Nassour 1993, Foreword). Although West admitted she could never duplicate Cline’s appeal and abilities, she did learn a lot from her. West said that Cline “would tell her ‘Find one person to sing to and sing to just that one.’ When I got that down, Patsy added, ‘Now make each person out there think he or she is that one and cast a spell over them’ ” (Nassour 1993, Foreword). West’s story attests to Cline’s native intelligence and ambition but also her generous heart. It also shows Cline understood what the audience wants out of an entertainer. West described how when Cline would sing, you could sometimes see her cry. She asserted it was sincere; Cline was singing from the heart and was in

Patsy Cline

touch with the emotions that propelled her music. In one particular session, in spring 1956, she recorded the rockabilly song “Stop, Look and Listen,” the cry-in-your-beer ballad “I’ve Loved and Lost Again,” and two gospel songs, “He Will Do For You (What He’s Done for Me)” and “Dear God.” The latter two were not released during her lifetime, but musicians recalled that she was in tears after she performed them. Opry announcer Grant Turner remembered that “she’d do those sacred songs with such feeling, there’d be silence at the end. Patsy’s face’d be covered in tears. She was as moved as the audience” (Nassour 1993, 87). Her performances took a step further in the country music idea of hearing the “teardrop” in the voice. During her career, Cline’s chief competitor was arguably Kitty Wells, who recorded “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonky Angels” in 1952 and followed it with other country hits. In 1991, critic Nick Kimberly, writing for London’s The Independent, examined Cline’s voice, saying that her voice was “softer, more sophisticated—more urban” but that the two share this “teardrop,” which can take the form of anything as subtle as a break in the voice, a stiﬂe of a sob, or a “willingness to sing a note ﬂat or through clenched teeth” (Kimberly 1991). Although Brenda Lee had more success in the pop market—her records, too, boasted Bradley production— her work was geared toward a younger audience. With the ache in her voice and her romantic material, Cline could not be matched when it came to country listeners, although she ultimately won fans for her pop material, too. A raw talent who seemed to forge her identity through her own devices, Cline in some ways seems so singular and original it is hard to think that she would mimic someone else. Early advocates talked of her ability to phrase as well as to really belt out a song. Others, such as Jimmy Dean, saw that she was looking to develop her own style, like many singers do, by trying out the sound of others. Dean said, “Patsy sang her butt off. She was a huge fan of Kay Starr’s and had a lot of her style” (Nassour 1993, 75). Cline once told a reporter that she attributed her talent to a childhood illness. When she was thirteen she had rheumatic fever, and she was very ill; her doctor put her in an oxygen tent. “The fever affected my throat and when I recovered I had this booming voice like Kate Smith’s” (Jones 1994, 15). Other female singer inﬂuences that biographers discuss include Rubye Blevins, a.k.a. Patsy Montana, the yodeling cowgirl; and Helen Morgan, who appeared in the musical Show Boat. Cline liked to sing Morgan’s songs, according to producer Owen Bradley. Biographer Margaret Jones asserted that “as a child she could safely channel all her emotions into music” (Jones 1994, 15). Singing became a way for her to do just that. Cline was by and large a singer and interpreter. Although she could play piano, she never took a singing lesson and never really learned to read music. When she was in California in 1957, though, she was asked by the owner of a motel in which she was staying to put music to words of a song he had written, called “A Stranger in My Arms.” According to the Winchester Star, which wrote a story about her in April 1957, she had planned to include it on the album she was scheduled to record

81

82

Women Icons of Popular Music

in New York. But label and management disagreements kept it and other songs from that session—including one she co-wrote, “Don’t Ever Leave Me Again”—from being released until it appeared years after her death on compilations of her work. She is credited under the name Virginia Hensley for the song “Don’t Ever Leave Me Again,” in 1957, along with Lillian Clarborne and James Crawford. These are the only known releases in which she was a songwriting collaborator. In January 1959, Cline told Miller that she wrote her ﬁrst song, called “A Sometime Marriage,” but it was never recorded (Hazen and Freeman 1999, 256). During recording sessions, especially in the early days when she was trying to ﬁnd the best people to manage her and release her music and the most suitable material for her voice, Cline could be difﬁcult to work with. Although Cline was professional, prepared, and usually on time for recording sessions, she had a mind of her own and was never shy about speaking it, especially once she had the audience and record sales to give her some clout and authority. “I soon discovered I had to place myself ﬁrmly in control otherwise she would take over,” said Bradley of their early recording sessions in the late 1950s (Nassour 1993, 136). Don Helms, a steel guitarist who also worked with Hank Williams, recalled her as being particular; she knew which musicians she wanted. “She had her ideas about tempo and arrangements. . . . Patsy could be stubborn, especially when she saw something a certain way. . . . It might be embarrassing, but she was usually right,” said Helms (Nassour 1993, 136).

LEGACY AND OTHER INTERESTS The songs that Patsy Cline helped popularize have been recorded by many artists, male and female, from jazz singer Madeleine Peyroux’s honky-tonk, sax-driven, loping, take on “Walkin’ After Midnight” to a dramatically different version by the Cowboy Junkies on their 1988 album The Trinity Session to covers by country singers such as Loretta Lynn, Dwight Yoakam, and even the Oak Ridge Boys. Some artists have gone beyond mere covers of singles. In 1977, Lynn recorded an album called I Remember Patsy as a tribute. The Canadian singer k.d. lang recorded Shadowland with Owen Bradley in 1988, as a deliberate homage to Cline’s early 1960s period. Certainly, the career of jazz-pop surprise sensation Norah Jones, with her multiplatinum album Come Away With Me and its subtle, sleepy mix of country, jazz, pop ballads, and blues, would not have been possible without a trailblazer such as Cline, who, despite her early insistence on singing country and not pop, achieved success in the pop world. Cline’s voice was simply too big, too smooth, and too indebted to jazz and blues singers to stay in the limited world of country; her voice was bigger in some ways than perhaps she initially realized. In 1991 the release of her box set, The Patsy Cline Collection, gave fans and newcomers alike a comprehensive look at her career. On its release,

Patsy Cline

83

Geoffrey Himes wondered in the Washington Post why the country music industry had not produced a I got me a hit record and I ain’t great singer “with the same full-throated tone, rock- never made a cent from it. —Cline, about “Walkin’ After ing sense of swing and bluesy assertiveness in the 28 Midnight” years since Cline died” (Himes, November 22, 1991). He then examined current albums from artists such as Reba McEntire, Shelby Lynne, Patty Loveless, Paulette Carlson, Lorrie Morgan, and Karen Tobin, and found traces of Cline’s legacy. He has even compared her to Elvis Presley in terms of her “reckless conﬁdence” in her abilities (Himes, November 15, 1991) If country music has not been able to produce someone else like Cline, this inability merely reinforces her singularity and the idea that, despite how classic and timeless her appeal may be, a singer like Cline could only really be formed under extraordinary social circumstances. Judging from the amount of compilations of her material alone—Cline’s entire recording history has been mined and much of her sessions, live performances, radio program appearances, and the like have been issued—almost all of the material she recorded has been released posthumously. In fact, after the boxed set was released in 1991, dozens of compilations of her music have been released on various labels. A group of Cline fans and Winchester residents is dedicated to preserving her childhood home and turning it into a living museum by restoring the house at 608 Kent Street in Winchester, Virginia, to its 1950 status. This nonproﬁt organization, Celebrating Patsy Cline, held a concert called “Crazy for the Blues” in 2002 sponsored by the Preservation of Historic Winchester, and half of the proceeds went toward purchasing the home. In February 2003 there was a memorial celebration in Camden, Tennessee, and in March of that same year, Jim Stutzman Jr., president of CPC, announced a national campaign for the Patsy Cline Museum project. In September 2003, a tribute CD was released called Remembering Patsy Cline, with appearances from the diverse likes of Natalie Cole, Norah Jones, Diana Krall, Michelle Branch, Lee Ann Womack, k.d. lang, Terry Clark, Amy Grant, Patty Grifﬁn, and Martina McBride, among others. At press time, the museum’s ﬁrst phase is planned for an existing building on Loudoun Street in downtown Winchester, in the historic part of the town. It will include artifacts, photo murals, montages, and a chronological exposition of her career and life. Cline has also been immortalized on the silver screen when Jessica Lange took on the role of Cline and Ed Harris played Charlie Dick in the 1985 ﬁlm Sweet Dreams. Prior to that, she ﬁgured prominently in the 1980 ﬁlm Coal Miner’s Daughter, which chronicles the life of Loretta Lynn, played by Sissy Spacek. Lynn and Cline, played by Beverly D’Angelo, were close friends. In 2005, a documentary directed by Gregory Hall aired on television called Patsy Cline: Sweet Dreams Still, which featured archival footage of performances, photographs, and other memorabilia. Fans who want to pay homage to her

84

Women Icons of Popular Music

life in a more personal way can visit her gravesite in Shenandoah Memorial Park where a bell tower stands in memoriam. Several highways in the Winchester area have been named in her honor. SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Patsy Cline. Decca, 1957 Showcase with the Jordanaires. Decca, 1961 Sentimentally Yours. Decca, 1962 The Patsy Cline Story. Decca, 1963 Patsy Cline’s Greatest Hits. Decca, 1967 Patsy Cline Collection. MCA, 1991 Patsy Cline Sings Songs of Love. Universal, 1995 Walkin’ After Midnight: The Original Sessions. Dualtone, 2003

FURTHER READING Beyer, Susan. “Patsy Cline: Through the Years.” Ottawa Citizen (November 30, 1991). Celebrating Patsy Cline. Nonproﬁt organization. Available online at www.patsycline .com. Hazen, Cindy, and Mike Freeman. Love Always, Patsy: Patsy Cline’s Letters to a Friend. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Press, 1999. Himes, Geoffrey. “How Patsy Cline Put Pieces Together.” Washington Post (November 15, 1991). Himes, Geoffrey. “Desperately Seeking Country’s New Cline.” Washington Post (November 22, 1991). Jones, Margaret. Patsy: The Life and Time of Patsy Cline. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. Kimberly, Nick. “Vocal Heroes: Tears of a Cline.” The Independent, London (December 16, 1991). Nassour, Ellis. Honky Tonk Angel: The Intimate Story of Patsy Cline. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. New York Times. “Grand Ole Opry To Perform Here.” (November 8, 1961). TV Guide. “Patsy Cline . . . No Time on Her Hands.” Partially reprinted article (April 6, 1957). Available online at www.patsiﬁed.com/articles/tvguide5657.htm. Accessed July 2008. Unterberger, Richie. “Patsy Cline biography.” All Music Guide. Available online at www.wc05.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=ADFEAEE47817D8 49AA7E20C79A3E52DBB57DF702FE5AFB86112F0456D3B82D4BBD0E4FE0 6BC2AB81B0E577AB7BAFFF26E85B05D2CBE452FBCC0640&sql=11:0vﬁxqr 5ld6e~T1. Winchester Star. Partially reprinted article (April 1957). Available online at www .patsiﬁed.com/articles/wincstar1957.htm.

AP/Wide World Photos

Ani DiFranco

86

Women Icons of Popular Music

OVERVIEW

I think people who know me perceive me as bit of a pixie.

Over the course of almost twenty years, the feisty, ﬁercely independent, and outspoken singer and songwriter Ani DiFranco has remained consistently proliﬁc and is one of the most inﬂuential independent singer/songwriters of her generation. In that time period, DiFranco has released an impressive array of material—eighteen studio albums, three EPs, two concert videos, almost a dozen albums in collaboration with other artists, and eight ofﬁcial bootlegs. Known at times during her career more for her independent streak than her music, at least in terms of mainstream press coverage, DiFranco espoused the punk rock do-it-yourself ethos from the beginning. She also founded Righteous Babe Records—located in her hometown of Buffalo, New York—at the age of nineteen so she could release her own work. Throughout her career, DiFranco consistently rejected several overtures and copious sums of money from major labels to release her material. As her career progressed, DiFranco used the label as a platform not only for her own music but to promote and release the albums of similarly left-ofcenter folksingers, world music, and spoken-word artists who combine music and poetry in their performance such as Utah Phillips and Sekou Sundiata. Uncompromising—although some critics have called her a control freak—for most of her career she has been the sole producer of her albums, never ceding the reins to another person until Joe Henry produced half of 2005’s Knuckle Down. However, DiFranco has consistently worked with some of the same engineers and mixers throughout her career. Her intensely personal music, by and large, is situated at the threshold of folk and punk, reﬂecting a heavy dash of social consciousness with humor and self-righteousness thrown into the mix. In short, politics and art are inseparable for this artist. Her songs tackle issues such as rape, abortion, sexism, and the evils of capitalism, and her voice and her songs are simultaneously compassionate, angry, and empowering, with lyrics that are poetic without resorting to pretense. As one writer for Salon .com put it, “DiFranco’s sound could be described as folk you can dance to, or maybe punk for the poetry crowd” (Leibovich 1996). Few artists have offered the press, fans, and critics such an open roadmap to their personal and emotional lives as has Ani DiFranco, and to the extent that she has made herself open, striving for a connection with fans, she has become a target for criticism and speculation. Such is the risk for being honest, but DiFranco knows no other way. Much of the content of her songs calls to mind the concerns of folk music—she owes much to Woody Guthrie— stream of consciousness lyrics focusing on politics and relationships. Her sound marries her lyrics with a uniquely percussive approach to playing the acoustic guitar that she does with a dexterity that is in a class all its own. An outspoken feminist, her early concert appearances at college campuses across the United States were almost entirely attended by female fans; if there were

Ani DiFranco

any men, they were usually the boyfriends of the women in attendance. At her concerts, during the more mellow tunes her fans are so devoted that it is possible to hear the proverbial pin drop. Her career is the deﬁnition of grassroots success, touring incessantly, selling her music out of the trunk of her Volkswagen, and ﬁnally, when Righteous Babe was founded, releasing albums like clockwork, once every twelve to sixteen months or so. DiFranco proved that she could work as hard as any male performer and be just as successful but on her own terms. DiFranco’s appearance, sporting tattoos and a nose ring, has caused her much attention. Her hair has taken on a variety of hues and lengths, including green, as seen on the cover of Spin magazine, as well as dreadlocks and a buzz cut in the early part of her career; all of these choices add to the ambiguity of her appearance and her willful disregard for the conventions of what a successful female musician should look like. For instance, when she appeared on the cover of Spin and then Curve (February 1995), a lesbian magazine, she gave equal time to each publication. In fact, her appearance on the cover of Curve was the ﬁrst major magazine cover appearance of her career, probably owing to her open bisexuality. Consequently, DiFranco has become an icon for both gay and straight pop culture, each claiming some ownership of her image and success and claiming her as a hero, or heroine. Although DiFranco is not necessarily known for one particular standout hit, she gained attention vicariously when the singer Alana Davis covered her song “32 Flavors,” which with slightly different production than DiFranco’s original version became a radio hit in early 1998, peaking at seventeen on Billboard’s adult Top 40 chart. DiFranco didn’t have a mainstream breakthrough until the 1996 release of Dilate—her eighth album. Since that album appearance on the Billboard charts, every subsequent album placed somewhere on various Billboard charts throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s. Despite her critical acclaim, her legendary devoted fans, and her success as an independent artist, DiFranco’s lone Grammy Award is for Best Recording Package for 2003’s Evolve and not for her music, suggesting that this artist still manages to ﬂy below the radar in the eyes of popular culture. Educated Guess, however, received two nominations in 2004, one for Best Contemporary Folk Album and one for Best Recording Package. Her collaboration with folksinger and activist Utah Phillips, Fellow Workers (1999), received a Best Contemporary Folk album nomination as well. Toward the late 1990s, critics started calling her work didactic and over the top, but fans have remained faithful. By the late 1990s, speciﬁcally around the release of Up Up Up Up Up in 1999, it seemed some critics were growing weary of DiFranco’s approach. In 1999, Alisha Davis wrote a review in Newsweek that said, “You may tire of her message, but her plaintive voice, and the way she attacks her guitar, stay with you.” DiFranco’s fan base is extremely devoted. As honest as she is in her music, her fans have returned that honesty right back to her, which has resulted in an unusually possessive relationship at times whereby her fans projected a sense

87

88

Women Icons of Popular Music

of who she should be—gay, straight, bisexual—based on their own ideas. DiFranco developed a rabid following early on through gigs at college campuses, folk festivals, and coffeehouses and bars. That grassroots effort enabled her career to grow at a manageable pace and provided her with more feedback and support than she could have imagined. Fans, transformed by her music, consider her an icon, inspiring the name “Ani Lama,” a humorous permutation of the Dalai Lama.

EARLY YEARS Ani DiFranco grew up in the working-class mill town of Buffalo, New York. Her parents, Elizabeth and Dante DiFranco, have backgrounds that have little to do with music; her mother, who grew up in Montreal, graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in architecture and was one of very few women in her class. Her father is a research engineer, and he too graduated from MIT. She described her parents as “workaholics” and by way of explaining her breathless recording and touring pace, told Cincinnati Weekly, in 2006 “I think I am a workaholic by nature. . . . I learned it early on.” But even with all that work, DiFranco described her early childhood as idyllic, saying that her parents were creative and interested in the arts. Early musical inﬂuences include The Beatles, John Lennon especially. DiFranco was exposed to folk music by her parents who created a haven for touring musicians. Unusually, DiFranco says that when she was young, she was not exposed to recorded music—probably because she saw so much live music in her own house. Listening to live music impressed on her the idea that music is a social act and not exclusively a commodity. Her parents did not have a stereo, and she did not buy records until she was in college. She got her ﬁrst gig when she was just nine years old—so to speak. Her parents bought her a child’s guitar, and at the store she met local musician Michael Meldrum. After they met, he started bringing her up onstage during his gigs and she’d play with him. He helped her land her ﬁrst gig playing a set of Beatles covers at an area coffeehouse. For a brief period in her preteen years, DiFranco abandoned music to pursue ballet, but at age fourteen she returned to the guitar and started writing her ﬁrst songs. During this time, the tenor of her life at home changed, and she has described her home life as “a mess” and “one scary scene after another” until her parents separated when she was eleven. But DiFranco credited her sense of possibility and her independence to her mother, who told her growing up that she could do whatever she wanted. “It’s crazy shit to tell a kid, but she was always incredibly supportive, one of those parents that thought whatever I did as fabulous” (Papazian 1996). As a child, DiFranco was precocious and not fond of rules and restrictions. Because she was so independent she became self-sufﬁcient, which helped her

Ani DiFranco

through her parents’ separation. Perhaps the independent streak was a defense mechanism. Rules and regulations were difﬁcult for her. She would leave the house in the morning, but even coming home as late as when the street lights came on was stiﬂing to her. During these formative years, music helped her ﬁnd herself. She developed her signature percussive acoustic guitar style, enabled by the application of long acrylic press-on nails secured with electrical tape. Meldrum, the thirty-yearold local folksinger and guitarist who became her mentor, was responsible for exposing her to professional musicians. Meldrum also worked as a concert producer, booking acts that were popular in New York City such as Suzanne Vega, Michelle Shocked, and Rod MacDonald. When DiFranco started writing her own songs, Meldrum was impressed and quickly started planning concerts for her in the Buffalo area. Playing over the din of bar noise, it was hard not to pay attention to her. Using what was at her disposal—the ethos of folk music with the delivery and appearance of punk rock—she created a name for herself. When asked repeatedly by interviewers why she felt the need to play in clubs beginning at such a relatively young age, she told them that she just needed to get away—anywhere out of the house. By the time she turned ﬁfteen, her parents were divorced. Her mother had moved to Connecticut, and DiFranco chose to stay in Buffalo and live at the homes of various friends. At this point, she had been playing locally at the Essex Street Pub every Saturday night and with the help of Meldrum started getting gigs at other bars and coffeehouses. Many of her friends were older than she was, but their common interest was folk music. Still, the ad hoc support system could only take her so far; she was destined for bigger things. After DiFranco graduated from Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts, she attended Buffalo State College and studied painting and art for a year before dropping out. She was ready for her next move. In addition to the immediate lack of opportunities for musicians in Buffalo (and the fact that she had exhausted her gigging options there), DiFranco’s sexually frank lyrics and seemingly uncategorizable sexuality made things tricky in a blue-collar, conservative town. “I experience love in a really primal, ungendered way. I’ve written about it that way, I use both he and she pronouns, I write about people that intrigue and attract me,” she told The Advocate (Obejas 1997). But that honesty made things difﬁcult and created misperceptions. People called her a man-hater. No matter what DiFranco did in her private life—because it was fodder for so much confessional, brutally honest songwriting—she could not escape inquiries about her sexual preferences. Staying in Buffalo became a no-win situation for her. In 1997, she told The Advocate, in response to a direct question, she identiﬁed herself as bisexual. She further elaborated and said that she really preferred the word “queer” because it carried a connotation that is more “open-ended. It means, like, the kind of love I experience is not the kind of love that’s on TV” (Obejas 1997).

89

90

Women Icons of Popular Music

It is worth noting that her appearance during the early years of her career, which included a shaved head and combat boots, was a direct reaction to her experience as a teenager, when she wore her hair long, —folk-pop singer/songwriter looked more feminine, and received a lot of attention Dar Williams from men. The impression her feminine appearance gave was not conducive to performance, so she altered her appearance, which in turn helped change the vibe of her concerts. Consequently, in subsequent years after her ﬁrst few albums, when she felt like wearing a dress onstage young girls in the audience would see her and scream “Sellout!,” unable to process the seeming juxtaposition of such uncompromising lyrics and point of view with an article of clothing. But if anyone could make wearing a dress a political statement, DiFranco could. As a struggling artist, she had considered sending out demos of her material to record labels, but her independent music-promotion philosophy developed over the years as she focused on politics. Part of that development no doubt stemmed from a fortunate introduction to local rock critic Dale Anderson when she was in her late teens. When Anderson, who had been watching DiFranco for years, heard that she was ready to move to New York, he was concerned that someone would take advantage of her talent. He arranged for her to meet with an entertainment lawyer who explained the challenges of a career in the music business—speciﬁcally, how contracts worked and how she could potentially lose the rights to her music. There was much to consider, because by the time DiFranco turned nineteen, she had written more than 100 songs of her own.

Ani resists this packaging, and the result is communication, not commerce.

CAREER PATH A Righteous Babe is Born Armed with the legal knowledge of potential pitfalls of the music business, DiFranco left Buffalo for New York City. After she moved, she played gigs and worked different part-time jobs. She brieﬂy studied art at the New School for Social Research where her favorite teacher was poet Sekou Sundiata. (She would release one of his albums many years later, on Righteous Babe Records.) She developed an infectious, grassroots musical following, and in response to requests from fans, she started making tapes of her performances. On her own, she recorded a demo and made 500 copies of a self-titled album, Ani DiFranco. She emptied her bank account and borrowed from friends to ﬁnance the album’s production. DiFranco used the studio of friends of hers and worked with Anderson on a demo that she not only could be proud of but also could sell. Righteous Babe was born in 1990. “It was like a joke in the beginning,” DiFranco later said, “very theoretical, like, ‘I have my own record

Ani DiFranco

company,’ which means that I just put out a tape independently” (Papazian 1996). The album has a rough, raw quality to it, with just DiFranco and her guitar, and her voice expresses a range of emotions, depending on the song. She can sing high and sorrowful on ballads but change to a low, angry growl as the song necessitates. The debut featured “Lost Woman Song” about a relationship with an older man that dissolved when she became pregnant and then had an abortion. Dedicated to poet Lucille Clifton, the song is an honest, difﬁcult snapshot of her time in the waiting room and walking through a picket line to get to the clinic. The song exempliﬁes her ability to show the ways in which the personal is political and the political is personal as it manages to simultaneously discuss abortion rights and a personal loss. In the early days, word spread through friends and friends of friends, and the folk community and college campuses were ﬁrst to heartily embrace her. “Whole campfuls of people in Maine had seventeenth generation Ani DiFranco tapes they were playing over and over again,” Anderson recalled. “It was not like she was an entertainer. She was a person who changed your life. And people really did feel empowered listening to her music” (Papazian 1996). Although DiFranco started her own label as a pragmatic move born of necessity, she acknowledged its implications. “I just don’t think you can say something meaningful within the corporate music structure. And I know I don’t want to be a part of that structure. I don’t want to support it, and I want to do everything I can to actively challenge it on a daily basis”(Gillen 1997). Doing things independently, although it required much hard work, was paying off. Fortunately, sales of the ﬁrst album generated enough money so that she could pay off the recording fees and ﬁnance a second release; DiFranco, due to her proliﬁc and independent nature, was able to release six albums in four years, a pace most artists, even those on major labels, cannot and do not match. And when fans would discover her via one album, remarkably, they would then seek out and purchase her entire catalog up to that point. As early as 1993, DiFranco was getting calls from major label executives, especially Danny Goldberg, then-president of Mercury Records, who was responsible for ﬁnding and launching the career of groundbreaking Seattle grunge band Nirvana. Between 1996 and 1997, every major record label approached her with offers but she turned down every single one of them. During these early years, Anderson operated as DiFranco’s manager. By 1994 Anderson had departed, and DiFranco hired Scot Fisher, a lawyer and an old friend who had worked with death row prisoners in Texas, to become president of Righteous Babe. She needed all the help she could get, because she was on the road three-quarters of the year and gaining more attention at each stop; media requests started to ﬂood the ofﬁce. Before the label got its own designated ofﬁce space in downtown Buffalo, DiFranco was selling albums via a toll-free number she had established (800/ON-HER-OWN)

91

92

Women Icons of Popular Music

and through mail order. Her music was distributed in the early days by one fan phone call at a time or by cassette sales at her shows. Record stores started to become besieged with requests for her records, and retailers would call, asking for a copy, then ﬁve, and then ten, and then a catalogue. “It was what you dream of—people wanting to hear the music who kind of forced the stores to carry it, and then the stores saw this was a good business, and so we kept making music and they kept buying it,” DiFranco said (Gillen 1997). In the early 1990s, the business was more or less run out of her living room, but within a few years, by the time Fisher was hired and by the time she was fending off phone calls from major labels, she had hired a staff and was selling her own merchandise—T-shirts and posters mostly along with cassettes and CDs—from the downtown Buffalo ofﬁce. It is difﬁcult to understate the importance of the story of Righteous Babe, which is integral to the story of her success. In the early to mid-1990s, DiFranco’s music was distributed through her own 800 number and through independent distributors such as Goldenrod and Ladyslipper, until their own direct-mail operations became unable to accommodate the rush of expanding interest and orders. In 1995, Righteous Babe made a deal with the larger distributor Koch to increase its connection with retailers. By 1997, though, three-quarters of a million copies of her nine solo albums had been sold—an impressive feat for essentially a one-woman (and several ofﬁce people) operation. By 1997, the label beefed up to a full-time staff of twelve people. She kept on the road in support of new releases, clocking nearly 200 shows a year, and was regularly touring with bassist Sara Lee (who had played bass with the B-52s, among others) and drummer Andy Stochansky. Around the ofﬁce, DiFranco was referred to as simply “the folksinger” or “the little folksinger.”

I can’t stop. I’ll keep making music until someone makes me stop. I love what I do, and if everything else that goes along with making music went away, I’d still be standing onstage in some dive, singing over the chatter. My guitar taught me to sing in textures, from the roundest lingering harmonic to the sharpest snap of a pulled string. Being a percussion instrument as well as a melodic instrument, my guitar also teaches me about the relationship between rhythm and melody.

Finding Her Way: The First Six Albums One of the beneﬁts of independence as a musician is the freedom to pursue a career in the business on one’s own terms yet still be successful. The low-ﬁ nature of some of her early recordings meant that she was not spending a whole lot of money on them—she wanted to just get the music out to her fans. As a result of this utilitarian approach, DiFranco’s ﬁrst few albums are raw and uneven, but her talent is unmistakable. It took recording and touring in support of those ﬁrst few albums for her career to gain some momentum.

Ani DiFranco

The song “Both Hands,” a classic DiFranco examination of a dissolving relationship, is one song that especially holds up and bears repeated listening; it has become a concert staple. Perhaps what is most noteworthy about these early albums, when she was playing with minimal accompaniment, is that she often played all of the guitars—electric, acoustic, and bass—with the only musical assistance coming from drummer Andy Stochansky, who started playing on her albums starting with 1993’s Puddle Dive and ending with 1999’s Up Up Up Up Up Up. Some early tours only featured her and Stochansky; occasionally, bassist Sara Lee would join them, too. When listening to her ﬁrst six albums—Ani DiFranco, Not So Soft, Imperfectly, Puddle Dive, Like I Said, and Out of Range—it becomes apparent that DiFranco was trying to ﬁnd her way both as a songwriter and a producer. It is also clear that she has a keen sense of humor. Always quick with selfdeprecation, DiFranco reﬂected on her studio technique—she was embarrassed about some of her recordings. On Imperfectly, she teased listeners about their inquiries about her sexual preferences with the song “In or Out.” The press latched onto her image but the attention, for her, was limiting, because she felt it distracted people from the real content of her material or caused them to take her less seriously. Finding Her Voice, Keeping Her Sense of Self While Living in a Fishbowl Not a Pretty Girl signaled the appearance of an album that was as complex and multidimensional as she. It is also the album that was made in response to the sudden forceful media and music business attention that courted her with money and promises. DiFranco’s independent mind and assertiveness kept her uninterested. Concerned with personal strength, the difﬁculties of human relationships, and ultimately an empowering listen all around, the album is practically comprised of one small manifesto after another, starting with the jazzy, sassy ﬁrst track “Worthy,” in which DiFranco taunts the listener, “I’m not worthy of you/You’re not worthy of me.” It is a refrain that could easily be directed at fans who were starting to expect too much from her, or an undeserving ex-lover. In the spoken word “Tiptoe” DiFranco painfully describes the anticipation of an abortion. By mid-album the title track surfaces—it too is another song that lacks a legitimate, tangible chorus—and DiFranco starts off by declaring, “I am not a pretty girl/That is not what I do.” In subsequent verses, she tells listeners she is not an angry girl, and calls people out—probably the media—on their own reactions to her music. Because one assertive song deserves another, DiFranco follows the title track with the fury-ﬁlled “The Million You Never Made,” a direct assault on the major label executives who pursued her, allegedly for her talent but really for their own monetary gain. DiFranco’s voice, suggesting both conﬁdence and an occasional sneer in “Not a Pretty Girl,” transforms into a full-ﬂedged,

93

94

Women Icons of Popular Music

accusatory snarl in “The Million You Never Made.” She repeats the last phrase, “I can be the million that you never made,” several times, the guitar playing becomes more furious and faster, and the drumming louder and more emphatic. It is probably one of the most concise and eloquent kiss-offs to the commercial music business of its day. Many of DiFranco’s songs follow atypical structure that adheres to her own rules for songwriting. For the most part, the verses are often long, sometimes irregularly so, and the choruses many times do not contain any discernible refrain—often they consist of repeated phrases, such as “la-di-dah-de-heyyeah” in “Worthy” for example. In “The Million,” the song title becomes a battle cry and the closest thing to a traditional chorus, but because she saves it for the end, its meaning makes a forceful impact on the listener. In “32 Flavors,” which appears toward the end of Not a Pretty Girl, DiFranco asks people to look more closely at her, to realize she is “32 ﬂavors and then some” in the very ﬁrst verse. The song celebrates one woman’s multiple sides, viewpoints, and inconsistencies as an act of resistance against the cookie-cutter, sound bite–driven, one-dimensional image that some of the mainstream press had started to use as her description. It is unfortunate that singer Alana Davis had the hit when she covered this song and not DiFranco herself, because the former’s rendering is soft, poppy, and toothless, devoid of the nuances and perspective that can only come from the songwriter herself. The liner notes for Not A Pretty Girl, though, offer listeners some insight into how important her fans had become to her and how important it was, too, for fans to be able to reach her personally. DiFranco thanked them for sending her things such as “letters, albums, CDs, tapes, poems, crayonscrawled stories . . . escaped journal entries . . . dinner invitations . . . action ﬁgures . . . jewelry, T-shirts,” among other items, and apologized for being unable to respond to each person individually. The brutally honest Dilate came out in 1996 comprised of eleven songs suggesting the major relationship troubles and psychological repercussions of fame. On the album opener “Untouchable Face,” she chronicles a dysfunctional relationship in which her lover has found someone else. The chorus is brash; she spits out “Fuck you/And your untouchable face” and toward the end, her voice turns soft, begging for consideration when she asks, “Who am I? Somebody just tell me that much.” The album shows a woman who is not as certain of her place in the world, someone in transition, trying to grapple with her changing world, changing self, and changing relationships. Nearly every song on the album is a sonic gem; for example, the dexterous, ﬂuid guitar playing on “Superhero,” in which she claims her inner strength is gone—“I used to be a superhero/ I would swoop down and save me from myself”—and laments that she is now just like everybody else. Lest anyone peg her as an angry young woman any longer, DiFranco ends the album with hymn-like “Joyful Girl.” It is a succinct expression of her inspiration and her worldview, with a clever turn of phrase.

Ani DiFranco

Many of the lyrics and songs were inspired by her relationship with a man whose identity she closely guarded during their early days, the cryptically nicknamed “goat boy” Andrew Gilchrist, who eventually became her husband in 1998. When she started dating him, the queer community was disappointed in her and felt abandoned. Fans would call her a sellout and harass her at her own shows. But when she would talk about loving women in mainstream music magazines, she got a lot of ﬂack for that, too. The mid- to late 1990s—when DiFranco was experiencing the height of her acclaim, success, and attention—was also a fortuitous time for women in rock music in general. Some might cynically say that “women in rock” simply became a marketable trend. Canadian singer and songwriter Sarah McLachlan formed Lilith Fair, an all-women music festival that toured the United States and Canada during three consecutive summers, from 1997 to 1999. When DiFranco was offered a spot on Lilith Fair, she demurred, saying that her shows were between her and her fans. No doubt that to DiFranco an event such as Lilith Fair, which was rife with marketing, sponsorship, and media buzz, represented the worst part of being a female musician: turning it into a commodity that outweighed any potential warm and fuzzy feelings about a women-centric music business experience. She said, “Lilith Fair is not the festival that I would put together if I were coming up with a chicks-makingnoise festival. I think I would have a somewhat more diverse group of woman musicians” (Mervis 1998). One could question such a move and think it selﬁsh and unsupportive of such a historic event. By early 1998, interviews with DiFranco had already appeared in Spin, Rolling Stone, Swing, the New York Times, CMJ, and Ms. magazine, among others. When Little Plastic Castle came out in 1998, the cover art said it all: DiFranco was depicted in a ﬁshbowl in a goofy but pointed image that poked fun at the idea that fame is like living in a ﬁshbowl in which one is subject to endless scrutiny. Overall, the album was more adventurous, and the songs took more sophisticated turns and incorporated new instruments for DiFranco, including a banjo and a horn section, showing a broader musical palette. Other critics said it was her most accessible album, a point that confused her a bit, as though her music up to that point had been abstract or difﬁcult. Additionally, the record marked a turning point in terms of production. The title track shows one way in which DiFranco ﬁnds herself looking at her life from different viewpoints. She tries to take an outside-the-ﬁshbowl perspective and dissects the way she has been portrayed in the media. She considers the way people are quick to judge character such as when “what I happened to be wearing the day someone takes a picture is a statement for all of womankind.” In the song, which does not have a necessarily strict verse, DiFranco sardonically describes life in the ﬁshbowl, “the little plastic castle is a surprise every time.”

95

96

Women Icons of Popular Music

The Live Vibe: Ani in Concert From the beginning, DiFranco’s live performances have held the key to understanding her appeal. Her stage persona is warm, self-deprecating, and lively. In the early days, her audience was comprised of young feminists and sensitive young men. To the uninitiated listener, a live Ani DiFranco album is probably the next best way (apart from a live concert) to get to know her beyond what her songs’ lyrics. From her goofy, in-between song patter to the response of the fans, who can go from raucous and supportive one moment to quiet-as-apin-drop the next, DiFranco commands an unusual level of rapt attention— and respect—from her audience. Her two live albums, Living in Clip and So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter, encapsulate her live performances, although the former is more distinctly organized into a beginning, middle, and end. When Living in Clip was released in 1997 as her ﬁrst live double album, it received what was the largest rollout of her albums to date: 80,000 to 100,000 shipped. Many retailers kept tabs on copies for fans by way of waiting lists in anticipation of selling out. In addition to giving fans a glimpse of her personality, her live shows (and consequently, the live albums) also highlight her ability to constantly improvise, change the instrumentation of her songs and her phrasing, and seamlessly segue from one song into another. In other words, live shows demonstrate her incredible facility with music, her ﬂexibility of mind, and her restless approach; she rarely plays the same song the same way twice. The release of her second live double album, So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter, occurred in 2002. The title was borrowed from her song “Cradle and All” from Not a Pretty Girl. The albums’ two dozen tracks are taken from performances between 2000 and 2002.The album also includes a rendering of “Self Evident,” a poem she wrote about being in New York during the September 11, 2001, attacks and which underwent much revision during her touring that fall. From 2004 to 2006, DiFranco released a handful of what she calls “ofﬁcial bootlegs,” live albums from individual concerts, from Boston to Portland to Sacramento to Rome to New York City’s esteemed Carnegie Hall.

Transitions and Reactions, Political and Personal After waiting a year and a half for a new release—an eternity for DiFranco fans—the double-CD Reveling/Reckoning arrived in 2001. The album marked a turning point for DiFranco, she told Rolling Stone, because it was the ﬁrst time she wrote an album with the idea of her band in mind, and because it also spans a number of different musical styles, especially jazz, more so than previous releases. She described the set as two albums but “one story is being told” (Baltin 2001). Reveling is, as its title suggests, slightly more raucous, with bluesy, funky tunes; Reckoning is a more somber, contemplative batch

Ani DiFranco

of songs. DiFranco said she initially conceived of Reveling as a dance record. Overall, though, the two records allow her to exhaustively delve into a number of issues with songs ranging from suburban sprawl to personal relationships. In 2001, Time magazine remarked on her evolution with this ambitious double-album set, saying that her music displayed a sense of nuance and texture. In Evolve, released March 11, 2003, DiFranco used more jazz-styled arrangements and showed that she was poised to explore a new genre and infuse its language into her own approach. This time around, she used what at that point was her regular band—keyboardist/vocalist Julie Wolf, bassist Jason Mercer, drummer Daren Hahn, a trio of trumpeters (Ravi Best, Shane Endsley, and Todd Horton), and saxophonist Hans Tuber. She says the process of creating the album was largely collaborative. Barry Walters noted that the record also marked an aesthetic journey that perhaps cost her some of her older fans while attracting newer ones who were impressed with her talent. “Evolve speaks to both camps with a succinct summation of her experimental side, here focused and more reﬁned” (Walters 2003). Educated Guess, which was released January 2004, contains songs in which she is redeﬁning and reinventing herself yet again. A reaction against extensive touring and being a bandleader, Educated Guess is a stripped-down affair with no outside collaboration or interference. DiFranco played all the instruments, sang all the vocal tracks, and recorded and mixed the album by herself in her home studio on an eight-track, reel-to-reel tape recorder. This deliberate move was admittedly a response to the pressure of working with a band and an engineer while touring constantly and keeping up her proliﬁc pace. DiFranco said that it takes “a colossal amount of time and energy to be a bandleader, to be an arranger, to get ﬁve people up and at ’em every night” (Orloff 2003). For Educated Guess she decided against using a band, and also makes a reference to her husband, whom she divorced in 2003. Yet again, the album chronicled her own journey trying to get back her sense of self and come to terms with solitude, empowerment and independence. Rolling Stone online called it “one of her sharpest, most honest works to date” (Orloff 2003). Knuckle Down followed in 2005 with production on half the album from producer and songwriter Joe Henry, who toured with her in 2003. The album bore the emotional residue of the break-up of her marriage and the loss of her father; she deals with the former in the moving album capper “Recoil.” Critics hailed the album’s lush textures and its sense of focus. Her assessment at the time of Evolve’s release about her sound changing was true: The subsequent albums showed a more sophisticated approach to songwriting and more compelling instrumentation that borrowed freely and unapologetically from blues, jazz, and a bit of New Orleans funk. The evolution, so to speak, shows her reinvention of herself and her facility with trying new approaches and mixing in new genres.

97

98

Women Icons of Popular Music

DiFranco took time off from touring and performing in 2005 to allow the carpal tunnel syndrome in her hands and wrist to heal. She started working on her next album, Reprieve, in mid-2005 but had to abandon the process because she was recording at her home in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit in August of that same year. The dozen songs on Reprieve were produced by Mike Napolitano, whom DiFranco had started dating. The record, recorded in the midst of the tragedy, reﬂects a political sensibility as it grapples with displacement, mourning, and frustration. The song “Millennium Theater” ends with DiFranco saying “New Orleans bides her time” but was written before the storm occurred. She expressed her anger to Rolling Stone about what happened, saying that Katrina came as a result of “human neglect, racism, incompetence and greed” (Orloff 2006).

I think political work comes in all sorts of forms and one of the least impressive is that of the politician.

MISSION, MOTIVATION, PROCESS In her songwriting, DiFranco has often stood up for the underdog, the little guy—or perhaps more appropriately, the girl—who has been underrepresented, repressed, or otherwise silenced. Without a hint of self-consciousness, DiFranco has used her platform as a performer to call to light various issues and causes throughout her career and to champion progressive politics. DiFranco takes a directly activist approach to her own career, so it makes sense that her songwriting would follow suit. It is this approach that has garnered her so many ardent followers, but it is also something that has made her a lighting rod for criticism of being too preachy and heavy-handed. DiFranco does not see her music as issue-oriented at all. Instead, it’s pragmatic and automatic; the personal is political. Before she became a musician full-time, she worked in politically active organizations such as a Central American solidarity movement in New York and the paciﬁst group War Resisters’ League. Once she was able to play music full time, however, it became the channel for her activism. DiFranco’s position gives her a natural and unique platform to help inform and inspire young people and to take part in some old-fashioned, 1960s-style consciousness raising, but she admitted that she feels responsibility not because she is an artist but as a human being. On the song “Face Up and Sing” from Out of Range, DiFranco urges her listeners to take responsibility for their lives and to start making noise about the injustice and corruption in their own worlds. DiFranco insists that when she writes songs, she does not start off with an agenda. She has to process what happens to her before she puts words to paper, and then the song appears. Although DiFranco’s speciﬁc style is unmistakable, her songs reﬂect universal topics that happen to be personal, through the ﬁlter of her experience. The road affords her little privacy or the

Ani DiFranco

time needed to undergo the solitary process of writing, so she keeps a journal. When she’s home, she can absorb the thoughts that she has jotted down in it and develop songs. But some pieces, such as “Self Evident,” directly respond to events in the world and get a more public process of revision and reﬁnement as she performs them and fans respond to them. DiFranco said that after the terrorist attacks on U.S. soil on September 11, 2001, many people cancelled tours, but she soldiered on and kept performing. “There was a palpable energy everywhere I went, everyone thinking of the same thing, searching for alternative voices beyond the t.v. [sic] propaganda and the deﬂating messages from the powers that be” (Ehmke 2002). The song ﬁrst emerged as a poem, delivered onstage with a feeling of urgency, describing that morning. DiFranco said she started reciting the poem before she even ﬁnished it, let alone memorized it. “I felt that since this was something we were all working on together as a nation, I could be a little less introverted with my process” (Ehmke 2002). The song was even covered by rapper Chuck D and soon after she heard that version, she tooled with it so that it began to feature a little more instrumentation. Ultimately, she ended up with a pared-down band arrangement. When the instruments kick in, the song morphs into something resembling a rap, as DiFranco sends out a toast to people living in war-torn regions (Afghanistan, Iraq, El Salvador), abortion clinic workers, inmates on death row, and other underrepresented, politically endangered groups. “Self Evident” is not her only song written in response to politics. “Subdivision,” which appeared on 2001’s Reveling/Reckoning, merges her personal and political concerns via a commentary on America and its aging urban, industrial infrastructures. She sings, “America the beautiful/Is just one big subdivision.” However, the song, like most of her best work, is also about something speciﬁc; in this case, her hometown of Buffalo. DiFranco fought to save some of the architecture of Buffalo, speciﬁcally a Gothic Revival church that was slated for the wrecking ball. She sunk $2.7 million of her own money into renovating the church, which she and Scot Fisher envisioned as a space for the company as well as a concert space and like-minded arts organizations. Hallwalls, an offbeat contemporary arts center, moved into the building in 2006 and Righteous Babe relocated there in early 2007. DiFranco has since renamed the building Babeville. Indeed, DiFranco does not forget her roots easily; a March 2002 concert in Newport, Rhode Island, raised $20,000, half of which went directly to the Buffalo performing arts school from which she graduated. The rest of the proceeds went to other schools in the district whose arts programs had been scaled back due to budget cuts. During events at the turn of the century—especially after September 11, 2001, with President George W. Bush in ofﬁce and the nation at war in Iraq as of March 2003—it was not uncommon to ﬁnd DiFranco headlining beneﬁt concerts or spearheading new awareness initiatives. In January 2003, she

99

100

Women Icons of Popular Music

teamed up with Chuck D, Michael Franti and his band Spearhead and many others for Not in Our Name, an antiwar concert in San Francisco. The performers signed a pledge to stand up against injustices committed by the United States government. Another noteworthy effort was the Vote, Dammit! tour in 2004, which visited swing states during early fall 2004 and featured appearances from comics, activists, and satirists; DiFranco also invited the Indigo Girls and Dan Bern to join her, which they all did for speciﬁc portions of the tour. Vote, Dammit! was part of her partnership with the Feminist Majority Foundation’s “Get Out Her Vote” campaign, designed to spur audience members to register to vote. (As a side note, when she was writing the songs for Knuckle Down she was campaigning for presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich and doing the Vote, Dammit! tour and continued to lend her support to his 2008 Democratic nomination bid in fall 2007.) During eight days in July 2004, DiFranco took a trip to Burma and Thailand with Irish singer/songwriter Damien Rice to visit refugee camps. At that time, more than 1 million Burmese had ﬂed the militaristic regime in Burma. DiFranco visited a camp, met with orphans whose parents were killed by the regime, and held meetings with Burmese activists in the hope that she would raise international awareness about the humanitarian crisis. She was the ﬁrst American musician to visit the refugee camps and meet with activists there. Both DiFranco and Rice donated a song to a beneﬁt CD designed to raise awareness of the Burmese capture of 1991 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi. DiFranco has also appeared with activist Angela Davis and singer MeShell Ndegéocello at a Critical Resistance beneﬁt against prisons protesting the death penalty.

LEGACY AND OTHER INTERESTS DiFranco’s record label has released several dozen albums in addition to her own by artists Utah Philips, Hamell on Trial, Sekou Sundiata, bassist Sara Lee, Andrew Bird (formerly of Squirrel Nut Zippers), Arto Lindsay, and Toshi Reagan. She also has collaborated with Prince and Maceo Parker on their albums. DiFranco’s choice of opening acts during her tours has brought many singer/songwriters to the attention of her fans, which has helped further the careers of some artists on her label such as Sundiata and Phillips. DiFranco also recorded two albums with Phillips, The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere in 1996 and 1999’s Fellow Workers. One of those songwriters for the album was the witty, acerbic, Bob Dylan-esque songwriter Dan Bern. When DiFranco was approached by Sony’s subsidiary Work to produce Bern’s album Fifty Eggs, after much wrestling with whether or not she wanted to collude with what some perceive to be the enemy, she gave in to her desire to work with someone whose material she respected.

Ani DiFranco

The company that started out of her living room and the back of her car remains in her hometown of Buffalo, New York. Many journalists have asked her why she decided to base the business where she was born. “It’s basically a way of realizing on a personal level that adage to ‘think globally, act locally.’ . . . I was living in New York City but we didn’t think that New York needed another little business; but Buffalo did” (Kidd 2002). DiFranco has done everything on her own terms—for instance, the stipulations she places on Righteous Babe products such as T-shirts. In 1993 she caved in to the demand for T-shirts, realizing it would give her enough ﬁnancial ﬂow to get some tour help, with the restriction that neither her name nor her image were to appear on her T-shirts. Her ﬁrst T-shirt featured a poem, instead, and all subsequent T-shirts have also been tastefully designed, many emblazoned with the Righteous Babe logo, a darkened silhouette of a triumphant woman raising her ﬁsts in the air. In recent years, DiFranco has relaxed her initial objection and her likeness has appeared on T-shirts. In a time when recording artists signed with most major label receive between $1 and $2 for every album sold (not including royalties) it is estimated that on average, DiFranco receives about $4 for every record she sells. The model for Righteous Babe is Peter Gabriel’s imprint Real World, which famously signed singer Joseph Arthur after Gabriel left him a voice message on his machine. She said: “I know I can trust that label to expose me to some amazing stuff, and I want people to feel that way about Righteous Babe, too” (Gillen 1997). Her savvy and business acumen earned her accolades from Ms. magazine, which heralded her as one of “21 Feminists for the 21st Century,” and acclaim from Forbes, Financial News Network, and the New York Times as a young entrepreneur. Additionally, her trailblazing has inspired many other female artists to strike out on their own (see sidebar). Always one to put her money where her mouth is, DiFranco established the Righteous Babe Foundation in 1999 to support a number of issues. The foundation works through the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta to ﬁght against capital punishment, for instance, but also donates to Hurricane Katrina victims and other cultural, grassroots, and political causes and organizations. DiFranco’s Foundation also donates to small nonproﬁt organizations such as Hallwalls, a combination gallery and performance space, and the Squeaky Wheel art center, both in Buffalo. By 2000, Righteous Babe was employing ﬁfteen people full-time, Scot Fisher continued to run the label as president, and DiFranco continued her aggressive touring pace. By 2003, her songs had appeared in ﬁlms, on television, and she had produced nineteen albums of her own. The Righteous Babe label, as of fall 2007, has sold 4 million records but, like other small labels, is not immune to the whims of the music business and the effects of rampant free downloading. Renovating the church, for example, shows that Righteous Babe is growing and giving back to its community in a palpable way that preserves and celebrates the arts. The move also suggested that the company’s

101

102

Women Icons of Popular Music

Independence Day: Other Female Artists Follow DiFranco Successfully building a career as an artist through her own independent label, DiFranco’s opinion of the corporate music industry has been clear. Founded in 1990, Righteous Babe Records has sold more than 4 million copies of her many albums. Taking the do-it-yourself mantra of punk rock to a new level, DiFranco, whose songs have always been political, turned that perceived obstacle into an advantage. Instead of handing her art over to a mega-conglomerate record company to accumulate a fan base, DiFranco grew a grassroots following through extensive touring and selling albums at shows via her own label, which now represents thirteen other independent musicians. DiFranco’s independent move more than fifteen years ago was prescient. The industry has been through tremendous change and the major label system is threatened by Internet downloading. Not only did she circumvent the system, a move that has been beneficial for her career, but it also opened up other avenues normally blocked by the corporate monoliths, which influenced other artists to follow in her footsteps. Singer/songwriters Aimee Mann, Jonatha Brooke, and Imogen Heap exemplify this trend. Unhappy with unsuccessful promotion and artistic interference by her record label, Mann founded her own label, SuperEgo Records, in 1999 and her own company, United Musicians, with songwriter husband Michael Penn, now home to several other acts. Although originally signed with Elektra Records, Jonatha Brooke began releasing her albums in the late 1990s through her own label Bad Dog, paving the way for her current independence. And the trend continues. Imogen Heap—a member of short-lived but acclaimed band Frou Frou—released her second solo record, 2005’s Grammy-nominated Speak for Yourself, through her own Megaphonic Records. The record was critically hailed and showed up on the television show The O.C., undoubtedly thanks to the momentum from Frou Frou’s placement on the Grammy-winning soundtrack to the film Garden State.

reach—and DiFranco herself—extends far beyond just the music she makes, and combines the personal and the universal in a compelling, socially conscious manner.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Not So Soft. Righteous Babe, 1991 Not a Pretty Girl. Righteous Babe, 1995 Dilate. Righteous Babe, 1996 Living in Clip. Righteous Babe, 1997

Ani DiFranco

Reveling/Reckoning. Righteous Babe, 2001 Evolve. Righteous Babe, 2003 Reprieve. Righteous Babe, 2006 Canon. Righteous Babe, 2007

FURTHER READING Baltin, Steve. “DiFranco Revels in Two CDs.” Rolling Stone online (April 17, 2001). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/anidifranco/articles/story/5931766/ difranco_revels_in_two_cds. Carson, Mina, Tisa Lewis, and Susan M. Shaw. Girls Rock! Fifty Years of Women Making Music. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2004. Carter, Sandy. “An Interview With Ani DiFranco.” Z Magazine (January 1996). Available online at www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/jan96carter.htm. Dansby, Andrew. “DiFranco Evolves on New Album.” Rolling Stone online (January 2, 2003). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/anidifranco/articles/ story/5933591/difranco_evolves_on_new_album. Davis, Alisha. “ ‘You Can’t Fence Her In.’ Review.” Newsweek (January 18, 1999). DiFranco, Ani. “Songwriter Musicmaker Storyteller Freak.” New Internationalist (August 2003). Ehmke, Ronald. “Ani DiFranco Talks About the Making of her Album So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter.” Ani DiFranco ofﬁcial artist Web site (June 28, 2002). Available online at www.righteousbabe.com/ani/sms_sml/sms_interview.asp Farley, Christopher John. “Reckonings and Revelations: Ani DiFranco’s New CD offers a Little Folk, a Little Funk, A Bit of Jazz, and All-Around Great Songs.” Time (April 23, 2001). Gillen, Marilyn. “Righteous Babe an Indie Success Story: Ani DiFranco’s Label Rises Up from the Grass Roots.” Billboard (April 12, 1997). Hirshey, Gerri. We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The True, Tough Story of Women in Rock. New York: Grove Press, 2001. Keast, James. “Ani DiFranco: the L’il Folksinger that Could.” Exclaim! (December 2002). Available online at www.exclaim.ca/articles/multiarticlesub.aspx?csid1= 43&csid2=9ﬁd1=1340. Kidd, Rocky. “Anything but the Grrrrl: An Interview with Ani DiFranco, founder of Righteous Babe Records and Folk-Punk Troubador of the Secular Left.” Sojourners (May/June 2002). Kuronen, Darcy (curator). “Foreword” by Lenny Kaye, photographs by Carl Tremblay and others. Dangerous Curves: The Art of the Guitar. Boston: MFA Publications, 2000. Leibovich, Lori. “ ‘Ani DiFranco, Dilate.’ Review.” Salon.com (June 3, 1996). Available online at www.salon.com/ent/music/review/1996/06/03/music960603/index .html?source=search&aim=/ent/music/review. Mervis, Scott. “Ani-Maniacs: Indie ‘Folksinger’ Has a Special Bond with Her Fans.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (June 26, 1998). Obejas, Achy. “Both Sides Now.” The Advocate (December 9, 1997).

103

104

Women Icons of Popular Music

Orloff, Brian. “DiFranco Goes Alone on ‘Guess.’ ” Rolling Stone online (October 31, 2003). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/anidifranco/articles/story/ 5935565/difranco_goes_aloen_on_guess. Orloff, Brian. “Ani DiFranco Salutes New Orleans.” Rolling Stone online (April 25, 2006). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/anidifranco/articles/story/ 10114009/ani_difranco_salutes_new_orleans. Papazian, Ellen. “Woman on the Verge; Ani Difranco.” Ms. (November/December 1996). Post, Laura. Backstage Pass: Interviews with Women in Music. Chicago, IL: New Victoria Publishers, 1997. Righteous Babe Records ofﬁcial Web site: www.righteousbabe.com. Roberts, Michael. “Ani DiFranco, Musician.” Miami New Times (July 2, 1998). Rothschild, Matthew. “Ani DiFranco.” The Progressive (May 2000). Wethington, Kari. “Ani DiFranco: The Punk-Folk Songwriter Chats with us about the Hurricane, Her New Album, and Choosing a Set List.” Cincinnati Weekly (June 14, 2006).

Courtesy of Photofest

Missy Elliott

106

Women Icons of Popular Music

OVERVIEW

Missy is tangible to her audience. It’s never been just about her songs. It’s always been about being someone her fans could relate to and identify with.

In the 1990s, Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott distinguished herself in the world of rap and hip-hop not only because of her gender but because of her nonconformist attitude, her status as a songwriter and performer, and increasingly, as the decade progressed, —Mona Scott, president of as a producer. When hip-hop exploded in the 1990s Violator Management and female singers were usually scantily clad background Elliott’s manager dancers for their male, bling-wearing counterparts or erotically dressed, booty-shaking solo artists. Missy Elliott’s creative ascension is refreshing because she refused to cater to racial or gender stereotypes—she wears what she wants and does what she wants, whether that means wearing unconventional outﬁts in music videos or controlling the course of her career. During her career’s early days she wrote songs (and hits), alongside her longtime producer Timbaland, for other artists such as Aaliyah (“One in a Million,” “If Your Girl Only Knew”) and the lesser-known 702 in 1996. In 1997 her debut, Supa Dupa Fly, showed that she herself was a force to be reckoned with as a performer—the record unleashed several hits such as “The Rain.” Her debut went to number one on the R&B/Hip-Hop chart and number three on the Billboard 200. Although she had name recognition as a songwriter, which led to her solo debut, Elliott’s music and her image were equally remarkable and trend setting (see sidebar). Part of her appeal is attributed to her strong visual sense, which she brings to her music videos, along with her playful, no-holds-barred approach. With her oversize hoop earrings, baseball cap, unapologetic use of make-up, and pristinely clean and unending supply of sneakers, Elliott looks something like a sassy tomboy girl-next-door and performs irreverent and forward-thinking music by throwing together unique samples and sounds. Elliott’s lyrics are usually marked by her wicked sense of humor, which is sometimes shown through the use of double entendres but can be more overt, such as a song dedicated to the self-gratiﬁcation made possible through her “Toyz.” In the New Rolling Stone Album Guide, a reporter captured her essence by saying that her records have the same kind of formula, of “sexy beats and vocals, Virginia swamp-funk hip-hop production from Timbaland, plenty of ﬁller, a couple of terrible R&B slow jams, and Elliott talking wild shit in between songs” (Shefﬁeld 2004). Equally formed by her Baptist upbringing, hiphop culture, science ﬁction, and Japanese anime, Elliott’s music is too singular to have been a creation of any kind of record label other than her very own, The Gold Mind, which she has run from day one of her solo career in 1996. All of her studio albums have at least peaked in a Top 10 chart; each of her ﬁrst three—Supa Dupa Fly (1997), Da Real World (1999), Miss E . . . So Addictive (2001)—remarkably hit number one on the Billboard R&B/

Missy Elliott

Hip-Hop Style Keeps Fans Guessing One look at Missy Elliott’s many fashion statements and people knew she was bringing a unique sensibility. Dressed in what appeared to be a blown-up trash bag, Elliott’s first and most prominent display occurred in her music video for her debut single, 1997’s hit “The Rain.” For her 1999 music video “She’s a Bitch,” she went bald. Instead of dancing around in heels, she is usually wearing sneakers and a tracksuit. From the beginning, Elliott showed that women in hip-hop could be viable creative forces who made their own rules; they didn’t have to simply appear in videos wearing next to nothing and sing, or appear as eye candy and fawn over male stars. She prides herself on innovation, so such sartorial gestures are not surprising. But hip-hop culture knows a thing or two about the power of clothing. Since its inception, hip-hop has consistently and obsessively launched a number of outrageous fashion trends. Videos for Busta Rhymes and OutKast showcase crazy costumes. Bright colors, goofy hats, and fur coats are often seen on the backs of many an emcee. Tracksuits and oversize jeans are also de rigueur, not to mention shoes, mainstreamed by Run-D.M.C.’s trademark Adidas shell-tops immortalized in their video for “Walk this Way” and the eponymous “My Adidas” from 1986’s Raising Hell. Flavor Flav’s big clock necklace has recently re-entered pop culture. And then there’s the bling. Elliott brought back that “old school style” of tracksuits and sneakers propagated in the early 1980s and appropriated it for her own one-of-a-kind creative style: unapologetic and assured. That attitude has garnered a lot of praise from women and men alike and set a new standard.

Hip-Hop chart. The next position for her subsequent record, 2002’s Under Construction, was nothing to be ashamed of either—it went to number two, and 2004’s This is Not a Test peaked at number three. Elliott has even made an impact on the Canadian charts, with the success especially of Miss E . . . So Addictive, peaking at number eight. As to be expected with such consistently stellar record sales, her albums have launched nearly two dozen Billboard singles across a multitude of charts—standard R&B, Top 40, Dance Music, Billboard Hot 100, and Hot Rap Tracks. Three songs have hit number one spots on different charts simultaneously. “Work It,” however, is her biggest hit to date, topping at number one on the Hot Rap, Rhythmic Top 40, and R&B/Hip-Hop charts and achieving more mainstream chart success, too, by hitting number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and number three on the Top 40 Mainstream. Elliott has received four Grammy Awards. Her 2001 song “Get Ur Freak On” won the Best Rap Solo Performance award; “Scream a.k.a. Itchin’” (2002) and “Work It” (2003) both netted a Best Female Solo Rap Performance

107

108

Women Icons of Popular Music

award; and “Lose Control” earned her a Best Short Form Music Video Grammy in 2005. All of her albums have at least received gold status, but Supa Dupa Fly, Da Real World, Miss E . . . So Addictive, Under Construction, and This Is Not a Test have achieved platinum status. Thus far, she has collaborated with, produced tracks for, or otherwise made a guest appearance on a song with artists such as Mariah Carey, Ginuwine, Mya, Pink, Whitney Houston, Justin Timberlake, Janet Jackson, Christina Aguilera, Lil’ Kim, Destiny’s Child, Monica, and most recently Ciara. Her label launched the career of the platinum-selling artist Tweet in early 2002. She has reportedly refused deals to work with Sean Combs under his auspices with Bad Boy Records, because she would rather chart her own destiny than follow someone else’s vision, but most importantly, Elliott admitted that she’s too ambitious for such a move.

EARLY YEARS Missy Elliott was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1971 as Melissa Arnette Elliott. Her father spent time in the Marines, and her mother Patricia worked as a dispatcher for the local utility company. The family also lived in North Carolina in a mobile home community during her youth. Young Missy spent her afternoons playing outside, singing and performing songs of the Jackson 5 until her mother would call her in for the day. Money was tight growing up: She has told stories about the rats that they would have to keep out of their home. Missy was also the victim of domestic abuse. Her father pulled a gun on her and her mother, and she witnessed her father hitting her mother on more than one occasion as well as being hit once, too. Elliott was afraid to leave the house to visit friends or stay overnight because she wanted to protect her mother. She later reported that she had been sexually abused by a cousin of hers, information that she shared with readers of Teen People. Elliott was raised as a Baptist, however, and maintained that her faith has helped through challenging times. Elliott is exceptionally smart and after an IQ test revealed her high intellect, her school skipped her from second grade to fourth. The change was so difﬁcult socially that her mother requested she move back to second grade, which the school permitted. She has told of her wild imagination as a child, in which she envisioned that Michael and Janet Jackson would ﬁnd her at school and whisk her away from her difﬁcult home life. When she was fourteen, her mother left her father, and she reports being inspired by her mother’s strength. While in high school, Elliott was a well-adjusted, funny, and creative teenager. She often wrote lyrics, sometimes on her bedroom walls (initially to her mother’s dismay). Her songs reﬂected her life—experiences at school and stories she overheard other people tell. But she was fortunate, because her childhood friend Tim Mosley, who by the time she was in high school was using the name DJ Timmy Tim, became a collaborative partner. He would later

Missy Elliott

record and produce under the name Timbaland. She says that when she met him, he was using a tiny Casio keyboard. The ﬁrst song they wrote together is called “Wonder Funky Groove,” but it was never recorded. When graduation approached, her mom wanted her to go to college or enter the military, but Elliott had other plans. Along with some friends— LaShawn Shellman, Chonita Coleman, and Radiah Scott—Elliott formed a group called Sista, which performed her songs to Mosley’s music. They eventually put together a demo tape with his help. Her career really began in earnest when DeVante Swing, a member and producer of the band Jodeci, heard their music one night when he was in Portsmouth on tour. He took them to New York City and signed Elliott and Sista to his label Swing Mob, an imprint of Elektra Records, and signed Mosley to produce the songs they wrote. The girls worked together for several months and recorded the album 4 All the Sistas, but the record was shelved for reasons that have never been speciﬁed. The group fell apart, but undeterred, Elliott stayed in New York, continued to write songs, and turned to her friend Timbaland. Elliott lived in Brooklyn with R&B singer Faith Evans, who encouraged her to be proud of her songs and to keep writing. Together, Elliott and Timbaland wrote for Jodeci, RavenSymone, and 702. Elliott quickly became known for her ability to write a song under nearly any circumstance, like clockwork, and for using the odd range of materials on which she would write—a Styrofoam cup, a napkin, whatever she could get. Working with Timbaland was formative; he would construct the rhythm or basic beat sequence—he is known for his pronounced percussive tendencies—and she would write lyrics to ﬁt. She needed to hear the music ﬁrst. The melody would guide her feelings. At ﬁrst her lyrics did not meet with much positive response from the industry, because she was writing about topics that were more “real world” than the love and money themes that were getting radio play. When she tried to change her style and write more about the traditionally commercial themes, she said it was not satisfying. Their next break came when they were asked to write songs for the up-and-coming R&B singer Aaliyah on her 1996 album One in a Million. Elliott’s work on this record was crucial, because it became a tremendous seller (it went double platinum) and spawned several hits, including “If Your Girl Only Knew,” which was an R&B smash. She was also contributing songs to Mariah Carey and Brandy’s career. Elliott also worked as a guest vocalist for Gina Thompson’s song “The Things That You Do” in 1996 along with MC Lyte’s “Cold Rock a Party,” which showed her potential as both a lyricist and a singer. Both successful songs were produced by Sean Combs and gave her even further exposure. In fact, he had hoped to sign her to his own Bad Boy record label. A veritable bidding war ensued among labels that wanted to sign her. Elektra Records’ Sylvia Rhone, chairman and CEO, took notice of this prodigiously talented and productive woman and offered Elliott both a recording contract plus the ability to run her own label. She seized the deal, knowing that it was of the

109

110

Women Icons of Popular Music

utmost importance for her to be able to control her own destiny. In the world of hip-hop, it was heretofore unprecedented for a woman to be taken seriously as a creative and commercial force, and Elliott’s deal literally opened the doors for many other female artists and groups to walk through. At this period in the industry, women were perceived almost exclusively as props—provocative eye candy in music videos and awards shows or backup singers at best. Elliott’s imprint, called The Gold Mind, Inc., not only releases her records but has expanded to promote other artists, too, including the 2002 debut of Tweet. The label brought her to the attention of Mona Scott of Violator Management, who became Elliott’s manager. Initially, Scott said Elliott did not want to be a performer, and described her as being painfully shy when they ﬁrst met. By the end of the 1990s, Elliott was earning up to six ﬁgures for her songs. It was a shock for her; she never anticipated that she could earn that kind of a living, and she felt blessed. When asked later about her unorthodox career path and the fact that she worked behind the scenes before she emerged on her own, she told Rolling Stone that it actually helped her. Elliott said that most people wanted to see a light-skinned, long-haired woman with a “Janet Jackson six pack” (Eliscu 2003). By the time people heard her on other people’s work, looks did not matter as much.

I find it a blessing that my name is everywhere.

CAREER PATH Critics speculated that despite the fact that Elliott was successful writing songs with other people singing them, the industry was not ready for a performer who was more on the plus side in terms of physique. Elliott’s talent quickly disproved that notion. She did not initially jump into the process of working on an album of her own material; her ﬁrst months on the job with Gold Mind involved signing other acts, such as Nicole Ray. She vacillated. She told a reporter in 1997 that the past rejection of Sista stung. Ultimately, she decided to record and once she did, the album came together in one remarkable week in a small studio in Virginia Beach. She and Timbaland kept a pace of ﬁnalizing one song in less than an hour. Before the record’s release, she was hopeful about its potential to break new ground. Released in 1997, Supa Dupa Fly was a super-duper success. Though “The Rain” hit the charts and helped propel the album to top spots, the variety of material on the album and Elliott’s own versatility—she could sing, rap, and write music—ensured it was a critical success. Steve Huey, in All Music Guide, held back nothing when he declared it “a boundary-shattering postmodern masterpiece. It had tremendous impact on hip-hop and an even bigger one on R&B, as its futuristic, nearly experimental style became the de facto sound of

Missy Elliott

urban radio at the end of the millennium.” The record earned her accolades from mainstream music magazines as well as rap and hip-hop publications such as The Source and Rap Pages. Matt Diehl of Entertainment Weekly proclaimed her “a wickedly innovative singer-rapper who favors expansive song structures and trip-hoppy textures.” Rolling Stone was equally generous in its assessment, noting in particular her personality, saying she was sexy and that Timbaland’s production “marries hip-hop beats and succulent R&B with a cool, uncluttered glaze that ﬂatters the rhythms instead of ﬂattening them” (Rolling Stone 1997). Elliott believes she and Timbaland as a team created a fresh, innovative approach that brought a new sound to radio. Both retail and radio liked it. The record was a number one hit on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and a number three debut on the Billboard 200. It spawned two hit singles, with “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” peaking at number eighteen on the Rhythmic Top 40 and “Sock it 2 Me,” appearing on four separate charts, peaking at number twelve on the Billboard Hot 100 and reaching its highest spot on the Hot Dance Music chart at number three. Her songs, with Timbaland’s production, are often characterized by their itinerant stopping and starting, with arrangements that are at times unusual. In “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” for example, there are layers of sounds that work together carefully to create a mesmerizing rhythm not unlike a slow, steady rain: a sample of Teena Marie, the sound of thunder, pizzicato strings, a bass line that sounds similar to a video game, all interrupted periodically by Elliott’s curiously phrased rapping. Her music videos, too, offered her singular visual style; in the video for the song “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly),” she appeared in what looked like an inﬂatable space suit that seemed to be made of plastic garbage bags, alternating with other futuristic outﬁts and sparkling, oversized sunglasses. Elliott is not an artist who is afraid of looking silly. Instead, this video and the many others that came after it showcase her creativity and her fun-loving personality, which resulted in three nominations for MTV music video awards. Shockingly, the album entered the Billboard charts at number three, which made it one of the highest-ranking debuts of a female hip-hop artist at the time. The record also showed that Elliott, in between celebratory raps and references to herself and/or Timbaland, could actually sing and that she was not afraid of explicit lyrics, suggestive sighs and moans, and wicked double entendres. In the song “Don’t Be Commin’ (In My Face)” she recalls her own experience, tells a lover to get lost and that it’s too late, she urges in the third verse that “all my bitches who sat home crying” disappointed by their lovers to “shake ’em off like Jell-O.” Later in “I’m Talkin’,” she reﬂects on her process, while multi-tracking vocals feature her singing in the chorus, “My style’s the bomb diggy” as the same medium-tempo rhythm repeats. Overall, Supa Dupa Fly is a slow and heavy mesmerizing affair, with smart lyrics and observations that illustrate her uncompromising and steely persona. Instead of touring in support of the record, Elliott got back to work. A shy person by nature, she was not interested in or comfortable with the idea of

111

112

Women Icons of Popular Music

performing in front of large crowds. Luckily, her record sales did not need any additional boost nor did she need much in the way of industry validation to conﬁrm that her ﬁrst foray was an unqualiﬁed success. More to the point, she was in charge, and so she could decide whether or not she wanted to tour. In the meantime, though, Elliott did perform a little bit; she became the ﬁrst hip-hop artist to appear on the Lilith Fair tour in 1998. For Elliott, there was no perceivable sophomore slump. Her 1999 follow-up Da Real World spawned a few hit songs, namely “She’s a Bitch” and “Hot Boyz.” Unafraid to take on her own peers in her songwriting, she points out the limitations of hip-hop culture’s clichés in “She’s a Bitch.” In the song, Elliott takes an insulting term that’s commonly used in hip-hop and redeﬁnes it for women who are strong and know what they want. Elliott talked about her subversive approach, saying, “I became a bitch in power because when I walked in, I asked for what I wanted. And at the end of the day, if this is the way I want it, this is the way I’m going to have it. I wanna be like a female Quincy Jones” (Good 2001, 151). Using it as a term of empowerment was a striking move for a female artist in a male-dominated ﬁeld. She called attention to the double standards for women who are clear about what they want but who are often maligned for the unwavering strength and clarity of their purpose. Consider “She’s a Bitch” as a sonic, ironic funky representation of just that. By this point, her work with Timbaland was so inﬂuential, they were hyperattuned to the fact that other people were copying their approach. She addresses that in “Beat Biters,” saying that others were “stealin’ our beats like you’re the one who made ’em/Timbaland’s the teacher and I’m the one who grades ’em.” Elliott’s persona continued to evolve with this album, and offered some contradictions for her listeners. Eminem, a white hip-hop artist whose lyrics can be interpreted as misogynistic, makes a surprising appearance on the song “Busa Rhyme.” Elliott pokes fun at hip-hop conventions even as she establishes new ones for women hip-hop moguls. In “Hot Boyz,” she narrates in ﬁrst person as though she were a gold-digging woman looking for her next male victim. Elsewhere, the record features other players and rappers, including Redman and OutKast’s Big Boi, along with Aaliyah and Da Brat, who appeared on her debut. Timbaland is at the helm again, ensuring the same futuristic sound and breakbeats and adding unusual creative touches, such as incorporating a “Speak and Spell” toy to electronically spell out her name on the song “Mr. DJ.” Again, she earned her accolades, with Entertainment Weekly giving the album an A– and Rolling Stone writer Touré applauding it, saying that “it all comes off like a soundtrack for a dark future where humanoids escape the pressures of intergalactic war by unwinding to hip-hop funk.” His one reservation, however, was that alongside other MCs with serious rhyming skills, Elliott paled in comparison; her lyrics were sometimes just too simple. “It’s only

Missy Elliott

113

her rare sense of rhythm, timbre and delivery that make a silk purse out of the sow’s ear that are her If ecstasy is the hottest drug, words. How strange to ﬁnd an artist so innovative then consider me your pusher. musically, so lucid rhythmically and so unfocused lyrically” (Touré 1999). Ultimately, he suggested—as have other critics since then—that perhaps Elliott was more interesting and important as a producer and businesswoman than as a performer of her own music. Regardless, the album was a number one hit on the Top R&B/HipHop Albums chart, a number ten hit on the Billboard 200, and it generated three singles in “All N My Grill” (with a top slot of number twenty-nine on Rhythmic Top 40), “She’s a Bitch” (top spot of nineteen on Hot Rap Single), and “Hot Boyz,” an even bigger hit. That song went to number one on Hot Rap Singles, Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles, and number ﬁve on the Billboard Hot 100. After the release of Da Real World, Elliott lost thirty pounds and stopped smoking marijuana to keep herself healthy and in good shape for touring and recording. Her new slimmed-down image raised some eyebrows among fans and critics who wondered if she were feeling the need to pander to popular culture by intentionally sexing-up her image. She discussed the issue with the press and acknowledged that her mother, with whom she is extremely close, would be surprised by the fact that she was smoking pot at all. During this time, she was building a new home for her mother in Virginia, and they were living together in Elliott’s New Jersey home. She was not shy about sharing her thoughts about her faith in God, continuously thanking him every day for blessing her. By the time Miss E . . . So Addictive was ready to be released in May 2001, Elliott was looking forward to doing some touring and performing in support of her record. She also decided to do more to promote the record herself by appearing on radio and at retail outlets and generally making herself more available in the months leading up to her release. The move was smart, because it put her in close contact with her fans, and they appreciated the gesture; it also jolted her fans and created a buzz months before its release. Additionally, her previous records had sold a little more than a million copies, and Elektra thought her third could hit the 3 million mark. Still working with Timbaland, even though he had branched out and worked with some other artists in the interim, the record was another platinum-selling success with several remarkable singles. The record featured guest MCs and other singers and rappers ranging from Method Man, Ludacris, Ginuiwine, and Busta Rhymes to Nelly Furtado and Jay-Z as part of her indefatigable mix over sixteen tracks. The biggest hit on the record is the song “Get Ur Freak On,” striking in its energetic rhythm, Far East melody line, and jungle beats. A dance remix of the song featured vocals from the pop singer Nelly Furtado. “People are going to bug out when they hear it. Nelly’s hot on the pop side, but R&B people are going to respect her when they hear this,” Elliott said (Collins 2007, 64). In a

114

Women Icons of Popular Music

2001 Rolling Stone review, writer Rob Shefﬁeld called the album’s single “Get Ur Freak On” “the weirdest, loudest, funkiest and just plain best single of the summer so far, a sonic orgasmatron of Indian tablas and Dirty South futureshock funk.” The album is noteworthy because Elliott showed that she could burn up the dance charts, too, with hot club tracks such as “Scream a.k.a. Itchin’” and “4 My People.” Two other songs, “Dog in Heat,” and “One Minute Man,” full of sexual lyrics, no doubt contributed to the album’s warning label of explicit content—a designation that was not alien to her. However, Miss E is a typical balancing act, with a ballad, “Take Away,” thrown in for good measure. Some thought it was her best effort yet, and Spin magazine rated the record an eight out of ten. “Get Ur Freak On” won her a Grammy Award for Best Rap Solo Performance, and “Scream a.k.a. Itchin’” nabbed her a Best Female Rap Solo Performance Grammy. The record was a number one hit on the R&B album chart, made number two in the Billboard 200, and even entered the Canadian Billboard album chart with a top eight position. Four singles made it onto Billboard’s various charts, including “Lick Shots,” “One Minute Man,” and “Take Away.” But “Get Ur Freak On” cemented Elliott’s status as a genuine genre buster, popping up on Canadian, R&B, dance, Latin, Billboard Hot 100, Top 40, and rap charts and earning a number three position on two of them. The video for “Get Ur Freak On,” earned a nomination for Best Female Video at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2001. It showed that Elliott was still committed to pushing boundaries and exploiting her active imagination. Part ode to Michael Jackson’s groundbreaking video “Thriller” and part science ﬁction nightmare, the video ﬁnds Elliott in a hollowed-out, cobweb ﬁlled underground universe with hip-hop ﬂy girls and boys dressed in quasi-military gear, dragging their bodies around with zombie-like dance moves. Additionally, the video shows her sense of humor with its self-conscious use of animation in a few places. Just one year later, in 2002, Elliott released her fourth record, Under Construction. For this record, she and Timbaland decided to pay homage to the early days of hip-hop. Beyoncé Knowles of the all-female R&B trio Destiny’s Child made an appearance, along with Jay-Z, TLC, and Timbaland himself. It yielded two more smash hits, “Work It” and “Gossip Folks.” In “Work It” she adopts the posture of sexual predator, thus stretching the boundaries of what is normally a male role in hip-hop music, and sings onomatopaeiainspired lyrics to simulate physical sounds. In “Gossip Folks,” she takes a shot at those who have been gossiping about her weight loss, saying “Girl I heard she eats one cracker a day.” Ludacris takes a section of the song and raps about his life and his career; Elliott gives him, through this appearance, an opportunity to clear up rumors and gossip that surround him, too. On “Nothing Out There For Me,” the song is set up like a telephone call between two girlfriends, with Elliott trying to get Knowles to come out of the house, away from a man she fears is controlling her friend, and hit the clubs. Elliott takes

Missy Elliott

the part of a cautious friend, but Knowles asserts that there’s “nothing out there for me.” Under Construction elevated her proﬁle yet again, the way that only a doubleplatinum album can. It sold 4 million copies worldwide and exposed her to an even wider audience. Rolling Stone writer Gavin Edwards called it “uninhibited and unpredictable” and “her best yet.” The record netted her a BET Award in 2003, along with two Lady of Soul Awards, including one for Song of the Year for “Work It,” whose video won an MTV Video Music Award. Elliott also won Artist of the Year at the Radio Music Awards, along with two other nominations for American Music Awards. Some of her most strident messages come through on this record, namely that she wants rappers to stop killing each other and MCs to dance like they did in the older days of hip-hop. Elliott also asserts that women have a right to be as aggressive and raunchy as men by asking for what they want from their partners and getting satisfaction on all counts. She humorously references a certain part of male anatomy by sampling an elephant roar. But Elliott is not afraid to also be a bit sentimental on Under Construction, although the move is jarring in an album full of heat. In “Can You Hear Me” she collaborates with TLC to honor its member Lisa “Left-Eye” Lopez and also pay tribute to Aaliyah, both of whom had recently passed away. In Rolling Stone, Edwards said that the “the track sounds like high-fructose corn syrup” whereas the rest of the album “sounds like habañero peppers, cinnamon and sweat.” While she was readying her next album Elliott sang as a guest on Gwen Stefani’s work, “Cop that Sh#!” In summer 2003, Elliott also started appearing in a national television and print advertising campaign alongside Madonna for the clothing retailer The Gap. People liked the ads, which exposed her to an even wider audience. In November 2003 This is Not a Test appeared. Although the album’s material is still progressive and interesting, there are no real showstoppers as on previous releases. Again, Timbaland produced, and the songs have embellished beats that are achieved by the incorporation of unlikely sources—echo chambers, ring modulators, torpedo tubes, and rusty pipes. The most arresting tracks are “I’m Really Hot,” which was a radio hit, and her duet with Nelly, “Pump it Up.” “Pass the Dutch” is a hot, throbbing dance track. The record continues the preoccupation with early 1980s hip-hop that permeated Under Construction and boasts a bevy of guest stars like Jay-Z, R.Kelly, Beenie M, and Mary J. Blige, but once again, Timbaland and Elliott’s presence permeate the disc. Elliott is still self-effacing and honest, with an homage to everything from her vibrator (“Toyz”) to full-ﬁgured women (the bonus track “Pump it Up”) to Big Daddy Kane and Fred “Rerun” Berry. And once again, Elliott’s record is full of shout-outs and thank yous that provide useful insight into who and what informs and participates in her creative process. Elliott stayed busy and expanded her interests beyond the studio by launching her own line of clothing with Adidas in 2004 called Respect M.E.—the ﬁrst such venture with a musician since the rap group Run-D.M.C. endorsed

115

116

Women Icons of Popular Music

its famed sneakers. In early 2004, Warner Music Group restructured and consolidated Elektra and Atlantic Records Groups, causing Sylvia Rhone to leave her post as chairman/CEO of Elektra. Elliott initially thought she would leave the label if Rhone was not there, but she changed her mind, citing the success of the label’s handling of many other artists. Around the release of her 2005 record The Cookbook she told Billboard, “I don’t feel like I’m walking into a bad situation. They’re willing to allow me to do whatever, because they respect what I’ve done. This is my last album [for WMG]” (Hay 2005). The Cookbook debuted in the number two position, giving it a superstar status. The record featured another smorgasbord of guests like Ciara, Slick Rick, and Mary J. Blige, along with television show American Idol’s winner Fantasia. This time, though, Elliott herself produced the extremely successful and relentlessly fast-paced “Lose Control.” Like the rest of her best singles, she earned attention for the video and was nominated for six MTV Video Music Awards. She won two for best dance video and best hip-hop video. The video also helped her nab a Grammy for Best Short Form Video and the song earned her four Grammy nominations. The video itself is a striking collection of alternating images of people dancing in different situations, whether it’s in the middle of the desert or lined up in matching warm-up gear dancing together in a way that calls to mind a chain gang. On The Cookbook, Elliott seems at ease and the material shines through even though there is a change in her usual recipe because of the production, backing, rapping, sampling, and contributions from many new people. She did not completely abandon her partner Timbaland, but she consciously mixed it up to bring in other sounds and vibes. She did not neglect Timbaland though, saying that she checked in with him for feedback and asked him to be directly involved with “Joy” and “Partytime.” Yet again, Elliott seemed unable to contain herself and cooked up sixteen tracks for her fans. Jackie McCarthy in Billboard said that The Cookbook suffered from a lack of economy, “serving up all you can eat when one full plate would sufﬁce.” Some critics believed it was her least uniﬁed album yet, confused by efforts from new producers such as the Neptunes on the futuristicsounding “On and On” and others that at times yielded uneven results. Still, it’s hard to deny her sheer energy; the album bursts out of the gates with “We Run This,” which playfully incorporates a sample from an early 1980s Sugar Hill Gang song “Apache.” Elliott stakes her self-deprecating claim on her artistic turf at the song’s onset, saying “My style can’t be duplicated or recycled/ This chick is a sick individual.” In 2006, she released a collection of her greatest hits called Respect M.E. The past few years have found Elliott expanding her horizons even further than her clothing line. She scored some music for the Disney children’s ﬁlm called Stick It about gymnastics. In 2007, she also produced a few songs for Whitney Houston’s yet-to-be released comeback album. Fans who were nervous that Timbaland and Elliott would not work together on her next record launched a page on the social networking Web site MySpace called “Reunite

Missy Elliott

Missy and Timbaland.” The fans were responding to a reported statement from Timbaland that her sixth album was too “over the top,” and they worried that her next release, slated for early 2008, would not include him. But Elliott laughed and told Rolling Stone he was “saying that in a good way. Like, I’m so far left, people might not be ready for me. . . . I never want to give them another ‘Get Ur Freak On’ or another ‘Work It.’ We’re trying different stuff, just going in blind and hoping that people will be with it” (Rolling Stone 2007).

MISSION, MOTIVATION, PROCESS Much of Elliott’s career has been deﬁned by her collaboration, perhaps even more so than the average singer or songwriter of her generation because hiphop encourages ceaseless permutations of singing, guest rap spots, guest producing, and other involvements. The community is tight but competitive, and her relationship with Timbaland has been a boon to her career from the start. Still, when asked about whether working with women is more difﬁcult than working with men and if women are more competitive, Elliott takes a pragmatic approach and speaks fondly of working with the artist Eve. “We need more women like her. It makes sense that if you’re hot and I’m hot we should make a record together. Because then we’ll both be hot and we’ll both have a lot of money” (Eliscu 2003). It is remarkable that Elliott received her own imprint under Elektra before she even proved to the label that she was a bankable artist in her own right: She was signed based on the commercial strength of her collaborations with other bankable artists. Elliott’s sense of possibility is what helps her become a visionary artist. Although other artists may be able to sing beautifully or rap with a remarkable dexterity, Elliott excels with the rhythm that she gives listeners and the wordplay that she engages in. Her keen sense of rhythm has enabled her music to successfully permeate the charts of rap, hip-hop, and dance music. Additionally, Elliott has become known for writing songs quickly and with relative ease. Her proliﬁc nature has aided her career and will undoubtedly help secure her longevity as an artist. After the platinum success of Under Construction, journalists frequently lauded her work ethic, which directly propels her consistent success. She appeared on the MTV Video Music Awards with Christina Aguilera, Madonna, and Britney Spears for its star-studded opening performance, won two awards, and was in the midst of ﬁnishing up her ﬁfth album in just six years. She told Rolling Stone, “Not to say that I’m the hardest-working female out there, but I do work very, very hard, and I don’t even feel like I do anything else but be in the studio. I have not had a vacation since I’ve been an artist. I always gotta be doing something or I would just get bored” (Eliscu 2003). Some might perceive her as overextended or overexposed at times, but Elliott’s pace is a direct result of equal parts ambition, creativity, and talent; sitting still represents complacency and lack of progress.

117

118

Women Icons of Popular Music

With her sixth release, The Cookbook, Elliott offered listeners a batch of songs that are far-reaching. On her ofﬁcial Web site, she said it is a challenge and described it as “ﬁnding that in-between space”—not so far out there that people cannot relate to it but not so safe that it’s not interesting or a rehash of material she’s already created. The ﬁrst track on the album starts with a blast of horns and ends with a fullﬂedged marching band sound, with a complete horn section. On “Irresistible Delicious,” she conjures the rapper Slick Rick but with her own twist. Elliott self-produced the song “Lose Control,” a party song if ever there was one. But the album is not just a creative pastiche of the now-and-then of hip-hop; it’s noteworthy, too, because it contains one of her most personal contributions to date. “My Struggles” is a reﬂection on her trials growing up with an abusive father. Elliott wrote that the song is “close to me. . . . I’m talking about what my home was like with my father being abusive to my mother. I wasn’t born into being a superstar. I went through a lot” (Missy Elliott ofﬁcial Web site). She added that it reminded her of Grand Puba and Mary J. Blige on Blige’s similarly confessional “What’s the 411?,” and it is no surprise. The Cookbook has the same sprawling, freewheeling, celebratory feel as Blige’s album What’s the 411?, along with its honest autobiographical moments. And so Elliott collaborates with those two artists to tell her story of survival and her own hard-won fame. Looking back, though, that sense of gratitude and of paying tribute has always been present in her records. On “Missy’s Finale,” which ends her ﬁrst album, she sings about her faith in God and thanks him for “staying with me through my ups and downs and through my whole period of doing this album.” The story of Missy Elliott, however, is a story of a work in progress. Elliott keeps people guessing because she is so forward-thinking and sets high creative standards for herself. She considers herself a young artist with much still ahead of her, despite her extremely productive ten years recording. And as much as Elliott is clearly her own woman, she admires the career path of her friend Queen Latifah, a singer and actress who has worked in television and ﬁlm and recorded albums with music that ranges from hip-hop to jazz standards. In 2003 she told Newsweek, “I love the way she planned out her whole career. She was an artist, then a management company, then a sitcom and movie star. She was nominated for Oscars! Ten years ago I’m quite sure she never imagined she would have lasted this long” (Ali and Ordonez 2003).

I do think I get more females asking for songs, because they can pretty much relate to the issues. They feel it’s their testimony . . .

LEGACY AND OTHER INTERESTS As a female artist who maker her own rules about beauty, sexuality, and femaleness, Elliott is a new icon. She has told journalists that women continuously thank her and tell her that they’re tired of seeing excessively thin women

Missy Elliott

in television. Around 1999 to 2000, Elliott actually lost some weight, and some thought perhaps it was an attempt to appear more attractive, a notion she disputes. She lost the weight for health reasons. Additionally, she told reporters she did not diet—she upped the ante on exercise. Her healthy attitude about her body image is inspiring and refreshing, but in the past few years, she has looked increasingly glamorous and buff in her music videos, so that an ardent fan or even just a skeptical observer cannot help but wonder if there is more of a makeover going on behind the scenes than Elliott is admitting to. Elliott continues to bequeath her legacy as an innovator by mentoring other artists through their work, whether it’s younger stars who emerged after she did, such as Ciara, Fantasia, Raven-Symone, Keyshia Cole, and Destiny’s Child, or the likes of Janet Jackson, an artist who has struggled to regain the traction her career once had in the 1980s and early 1990s. Elliott believes, though, that this work with other artists, speciﬁcally through the auspices of her Gold Mind, informs her own songwriting process. During the course of her career, Elliott has balanced her attention between charitable and commercial interests. Elliott has worked as spokeswoman for the organization Break the Cycle, whose mission is to enable young people to stop domestic abuse. After her ﬁrst few albums were released and the industry felt the impact of her strong image, she did not shy away from expanding her image and branding it in more public ways. To that end, she has appeared in campaigns for Adidas, The Gap, Virgin Mobile, Vanilla Coke, and MAC Cosmetics. These activities elevate her proﬁle and position her as part of mainstream American culture. Elliott even has her own shade of lipstick, appropriately called Misdemeanor, with Iman Cosmetics and donates part of the proceeds to help battered teens. Additionally, she has taken on small roles in ﬁlms such as Pootie Tang and Honey. In 2004, she started Respect M.E., a line of clothing with Adidas, a portion of whose sales are donated toward Break the Cycle. One year later, she launched a reality program on UPN called The Road to Stardom with Missy Elliott, a musical talent competition of which she is a judge and a co-executive producer. In response to concerns that she was becoming overexposed, Elliott seemed unconcerned; she was committed to staying true to herself. With an eye toward ensuring that her image is well-represented on celluloid, Elliott is slated to appear in a ﬁlm about her life, set to be produced by Robert DeNiro’s company Tribeca Films.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Supa Dupa Fly. Elektra, 1997 Da Real World. Elektra, 1999 Miss E . . . So Addictive. Elektra, 2001 Under Construction. Elektra, 2002 This is Not a Test! Elektra, 2004

119

120

Women Icons of Popular Music

FURTHER READING Ali, Lorraine, and Jennifer Ordonez. “The Marketing of Missy: The Electrifying Ms. Elliott Gets Commodiﬁed.” Newsweek (December 8, 2003). Collins, Tracy Brown. Hip-Hop Stars: Missy Elliott. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2007. Diehl, Matt. “Missy Elliott. Supa Dupa Fly. Review.” Entertainment Weekly (August 8, 1997). Available online at www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,288987,00.html. Edwards, Gavin. “Under Construction. Review.” Rolling Stone 911 (December 12, 2002). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/missyelliott/albums/ album/88784/review/6067498/under_construction. Elliott, Missy. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. www.missy-elliott.com. Good, Karen Renee. “Feeling Bitchy: Missy Elliott.” Hip Hop Divas. New York: Vibe Books/Three Rivers Press, 2001. Hay, Carla. “The Last Word: A Q&A with Missy Elliott.” Billboard (February 26, 2005). Huey, Steve. “Supa Dupa Fly. Review.” All Music Guide. Available online at wc10 .allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=ADFEAEE47817D849AA7E20 C79A3 E52DBB57DF702FE5AFB86112F0456D3B82D4BBD0E4FE06BC2AB8 1B0FA6AB57FB0FD2EA45D43D2CAE456FBD667382DFC93&sql=10:hbfexqu hldke. Jones, Steve. “Elliott Takes Off with ‘Supa Dupa Fly.’ ” USA Today (September, 1997). McCarthy, Jackie. “Missy Elliott: The Cookbook. Review.” Billboard (July 16, 2005). Paoletta, Michael. “Elliott: Running at Full Throttle. Review.” Billboard (December 13, 2003). Rolling Stone. “Missy Elliott. Supa Dupa Fly. Review.”(December 17, 1997). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/missyelliott/albums/album/118971/review/ 6067401/supa_dupa_ﬂy. Rolling Stone. “Fall Music Preview 2007: Bruce Springsteen, James Blunt, Alicia Keys and More.” (September 7, 2007). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/ photos/gallery/16296997/fall_music_preview_2007_bruce_spr/photo/27/large. Schnuer, Jenna. “Mona Scot, Missy Elliott: Once ‘Painfully Shy’ Performer Steps Out Front With Adidas and Gap Deals and Adoring Audience.” Advertising Age (March 1, 2004). Shefﬁeld, Rob. “Miss E . . . So Addictive. Review.” Rolling Stone 871 (May 29, 2001). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/missyelliott/albums/album/202317/ review/6067560/miss_eso_addictive. Shefﬁeld, Rob. The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/missyelliott/biography. Shefﬁeld, Rob. “This is Not a Test. Review.” Rolling Stone (December 25, 2003). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/296896/review/6067976/ thisisnotatest. Touré. “The Real World. Review.” Rolling Stone (July 9, 1999). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/missyelliott/albums/album/280440/review/ 6067699/da_real_world.

Frank Driggs Collection/Getty Images

Aretha Franklin

122

Women Icons of Popular Music

OVERVIEW

I don’t know anybody that can sing a song like Aretha Franklin. Nobody. Period.

Aretha Franklin, perhaps more than any other singer of her genre and generation, managed to blend blues, —Ray Charles soul, gospel, rhythm and blues, and other roots music into her own heady style, garnering herself the nickname “Queen of Soul.” She is what is commonly referred to as a living legend. Franklin’s career is a testimony to her diverse musical interests and her singular vocal talent, both formed by an early life spent singing gospel music in church and listening to her charismatic father preach. Although Franklin started off her recording career with Columbia Records when she was just a teenager, her career really saw its peak in the late 1960s through the early 1970s when she was releasing records with Atlantic, with hits such as “Respect,” “I Never Loved a Man,” “Baby I Love You,” “Chain of Fools,” “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” “I Say a Little Prayer,” “Think,” and “The House that Jack Built.” This remains her most productive, commercially viable, and critically acclaimed recording period. As the 1970s wore on, her albums became more mature and more thought out, yet she went through a lull toward the end of the decade. Franklin capped off the decade by falling somewhat of a victim to current musical trends by recording a disco album in 1979 called La Diva, seemingly predicting or cementing her transition from queen of soul to fullﬂedged diva. In the 1980s, she changed labels again, moving to Arista, and as the decade progressed she experienced another burst of commercial success with Jump to It and more signiﬁcantly Who’s Zoomin’ Who? The 1980s saw three Top 10 hits, including “Freeway of Love,” “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?,” and the duet with George Michael “I Knew You Were Waiting (for Me).” During the 1960s and into the 1970s, Franklin became an important symbol of the powerful African American female, a woman whose performance persona exuded conﬁdence during the decade of civil rights, the Black Panthers, women’s liberation, and other humanitarian movements. She and her family, because of her father’s minister-celebrity status, were close with many important cultural ﬁgures of the day, including Martin Luther King Jr. Anthems such as “Respect,” despite what some may say, are not strictly feminist—it is impossible to separate the sentiments from equal rights and black pride. Even the course of Franklin’s career can reﬂect the changing times, as seen through the various chart names that Billboard used from the early 1960s through 2000s: her earliest hits landed on “black singles” lists that were later labeled rhythm and blues. With idols such as Sam Cooke, Clara Ward, Mahalia Jackson, and Dinah Washington, Franklin saw evidence before her of musical excellence and of artists who were able to achieve success in multiple genres. The crossover success of gospel singer Sam Cooke was especially important to her career. In 2003, Billboard published an article chronicling her achievements and concluded that Franklin has the most Top 10 and number-one rated R&B

Aretha Franklin

albums of any solo artist and the most charting R&B albums and Top 40 R&B albums of any solo female artist, with seventeen Top 10 hits, twentytwo Top 40 Billboard 200 albums, twenty number one R&B/Hip-Hop singles and tracks, and ten number one R&B/Hip-Hop albums. These numbers put her in a league of her own (Billboard 2003). Franklin has won seventeen Grammy Awards, starting in 1967 for the song “Respect,” which garnered her Best Female R&B Vocal Performance and Best R&B Recording/Best R&B Performance. Eight more Grammy Awards would follow in the ensuing six years: She netted her ﬁrst Grammy for the 1972 album Amazing Grace, which got Best Soul Gospel Performance, and in 1972 she also earned a Best Female R&B Performance Grammy for Young Gifted and Black, which took its title from a Nina Simone song. The mid-1980s were also good to her; “Freeway of Love” in 1985 nabbed her Best Female R&B Vocal Performance (she has won this Grammy eleven times) and 1987’s “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me),” a duet with British soul-pop singer George Michael got them both a Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. Her return to gospel with One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism in 1988 earned her Best Soul Gospel Performance-Female for the album. Her most recent Grammy, for Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance, was awarded in 2005 for the song “A House is Not A Home.” Franklin, twice divorced, still lives in suburban Detroit and may derive some comfort from the area as a safe haven in the midst of her fame and accomplishments, disappointments and heartbreaks. In her own autobiography, she alludes to her Cancer moon as part of why she enjoys domesticity and cooking. Her children are grown and many of them are talented musicians. Franklin, however, bristles at the notion that she is “hiding” in Detroit or even that she is more conﬁdent there, but the truth is that she has slowed down considerably in the past ten years and has reduced her touring and recording.

EARLY YEARS Although she was born in Memphis, the family did not stay there long; they moved to Buffalo and then Detroit, on the north end, and then to the west side. Franklin’s musical roots are ﬁrmly planted in the world of gospel. From a young age, Franklin was exposed to music, religion, and ideas of equality. Franklin grew up with two sisters, Carolyn and Erma, both of whom had recording careers, and she is the fourth of ﬁve children. Her brother Cecil has worked as her manager. As children, the three sisters would sing in the Detroit church of her Baptist minister father, Reverend C.L. Franklin. Her mother, Barbara Siggers, was a well-known gospel singer and worked as a nurse’s aid. Her parents separated when Franklin was just six years old, and her mother moved to Buffalo without the children, who would often visit her in the summertime.

123

124

Women Icons of Popular Music

Her parents decided her father should be charged with raising and providing for them; his salary afforded that. When Franklin was ten years old, her mother died of a heart attack, which shocked and saddened young Aretha. Music, however, speciﬁcally the gospel music of the church, was a tremendous comfort. Her father, who was by most accounts charismatic and charming, was a prominent advocate for civil rights and a well-compensated speaker with a propensity toward Cadillacs and alligator shoes. Franklin said he often was referred to as the “black prince” because he was so sharply dressed (Franklin and Ritz 1999, 13). He was often called away from the family for speaking engagements at other churches, and during those times, the children were often looked after by family friends such as gospel vocalists Frances Steadman, Marion Williams, or Mahalia Jackson, who became an inspiration to Franklin. Her father was responsible for bringing Martin Luther King Jr. to Detroit for an event that many consider the template for the famous march on Washington, DC, later in the decade. Her father has had perhaps the most singular inﬂuence on her life, and she continued to seek his guidance throughout difﬁcult times. His skills as a minister—which in some regard is a performance—also came in handy when the young Franklin was nervous or insecure. Living in Detroit in the 1950s meant fertile ground for singers and performers. When Franklin was about eight or nine years old, she started messing around with the piano while listening to Eddie Heywood on the record player. Encouraged by her interest in music, her father gave her piano lessons, but Franklin hated it, saying that it felt too much like school. Eventually, she taught herself how to play and learned, too, that she could sing. Jackson’s presence in her life often meant visits from famous artists such as Dinah Washington, Art Tatum, Sam Cooke, James Cleveland, and Clara Ward. Cleveland became one of her earliest mentors. He taught her how to reach notes that previously were out of her range. Clara Ward’s performance at the funeral of one of Franklin’s aunts had an impact on her too; after being wowed by Ward’s performance, Franklin knew she wanted to sing. Growing up, watching Sam Cooke’s career take off, Franklin saw that a career shift from gospel to soul music was possible. Franklin had her ﬁrst solo in church at age nine or ten. Around this time, she was modeling herself after Ward, who also sang and played the piano in church; Ward was also a close friend of her father. During the time she sang as a soloist in church, she was paid $15 a week. Other childhood passions included roller skating and boxing—she would watch boxing matches on television with her father. As a young teenager, from about the age of thirteen to sixteen, Franklin spent time as part of a traveling gospel road show with her father and her siblings, which was a result of his growing celebrity. As his celebrity status as a preacher increased, he recorded sermons on Chess Records and appeared on radio programs around the country. The experience of being on the road gave her early insight into discrimination, the rigors of touring, and a dose of responsibility,

Aretha Franklin

all of which would come in handy later as her own career started to take off. But Franklin’s childhood was not necessarily easy, even if she had found her muse early. She became pregnant and had a baby at the age of fourteen; Franklin has remained silent on the identity of the father. Likewise, the family has refused to discuss why Franklin’s mother left. Her teenage pregnancy experience was unfortunately somewhat of a foreshadowing of the thorny nature of Franklin’s relationships with men; for example, the details of her second divorce have barely been discussed publicly. Franklin has been shy her entire life; some have mistaken it for arrogance. But the death of her mother, according to some family friends, accounts for the change in her previously outgoing personality to being wary, shy, and introverted. Franklin made her very ﬁrst recording at age fourteen as a gospel singer, which took place at a church in Oakland, California, as part of a service her father at which her father was appearing. In 1956, Chess Records released a compilation of her gospel performances from the New Bethel Baptist Church at home in Detroit under the title Songs of Faith. She sang several standard tunes, but reinterpreted them with the accompaniment of the church choir swelling behind her and even at the age of fourteen showed she was capable of making them her own. Reportedly, Motown Records wanted Franklin to sign with them in its early days; Billy “Tyran Carlo” Davis and Berry Gordy Jr., the latter of whom went on to found Motown, were two young songwriters who regularly came to hear Franklin sing at church. Prior to founding Motown, the pair wanted her to sign a production deal with Chess Records and sing their songs, fresh off their success with Jackie Wilson. Her father vetoed the idea, saying she was too young. Instead, they prepared her older sister, Erma, for a session, with Aretha on piano. Motown, too, reportedly had expressed an interest, but Franklin said that she and her father had their sights set on bigger things, which is rumored to have angered some members of the African American community in Detroit (Jackson 2005, 166). When Franklin had a child at age fourteen, she dropped out of high school. In her autobiography, she alludes to the father as a neighborhood boy she was in love with but gives him an alias and has never identiﬁed him (Franklin and Ritz 1999, 58). Franklin named her son after her father, Clarence Franklin. She also had another child, Edward, a couple of years later. During the time when she was home with her new baby, in the late 1950s, Franklin decided she wanted to model her career after Dinah Washington’s, whose move from blues to jazz made her a spectacular success thanks in part to the help of Clyde Otis from Mercury Records. Ted White, who would later become Franklin’s ﬁrst husband, visited the Franklin house with Washington. Franklin was taken with Washington and decided that it was time to pursue her own career. Her father was initially reluctant for her to leave Detroit for New York City, because she left the baby behind in the care of her father’s mother and also left behind gospel music for secular. Once in New York, bass player Major “Mule” Holly produced a demo of her singing a blues tune.

125

126

Women Icons of Popular Music

Franklin auditioned for Jo King, who became her manager, and Holly got the demo into the hands of John Hammond at Columbia Records, who had a strong track record among jazz artists. After hearing her, he wrote in his memoir that he thought her voice was the best he’d heard in quite a while. Franklin was just eighteen years old. To say that his approval was fortuitous would be an understatement: Hammond discovered Billie Holiday, was responsible for some of Bessie Smith’s ﬁnal recordings, and signed big band leader Count Basie, all prior to meeting Franklin.

CAREER PATH The Columbia Years Franklin signed with Columbia, thanks to John Hammond, for a six-year contract that resulted in a proliﬁc output: ten albums and two “greatest hits” collections. Her contractual arrangement was unprecedented and provided her with a “substantial royalty rate” according to Buzzy Jackson (Jackson 2005, 166). Her ﬁrst Columbia record, Aretha, came out in 1961 and featured her take on a smattering of styles—pop, jazz, blues, and show tunes— recorded with the Ray Bryant jazz group. Hammond wanted to develop a following among jazz audiences but still retain the gospel quality of her voice. The ﬁrst four tracks, “Over the Rainbow,” “Today I Sing the Blues,” “Right Now,” and “Love is the Only Thing,” were live takes in the studio, meant to feel spontaneous and intimate. In October 1960, “Today I Sing the Blues” was the ﬁrst song released before the album, and it found an audience with R&B fans and became her ﬁrst Top 10 single. “Won’t Be Long” was released in February 1961, and went to number seven on the R&B chart, crossing brieﬂy over to the pop chart to hit number seventy-six. When her debut album was released in March 1961 it garnered favorable reviews. Billboard remarked, “[S]he brings a true and strong gospel accent into a ﬁne full-blown blues” (Bego 2001, 47). Franklin started taking piano, voice, and dance lessons, as well as other classes, under the guidance of Jo King. She spent a good portion of 1961 touring to promote her album, playing mostly in dark, smoky rooms along the jazz circuit of the United States. Down Beat magazine pronounced her “New Star Female Vocalist” in 1961. Franklin never saw herself as strictly a jazz singer; her sights were set higher and across genres. Although much of her Columbia material is jazz-based, she also covered more blues-based material, such as Dinah Washington’s “Soulville.” Critics noticed how natural such music seemed to come to her and, although they were quick to assign her ﬂuidity with the blues to real life experience, it is just as likely that Franklin’s performances during these early years were equally inﬂuenced by her father’s impassioned sermons and by growing up in a veritable incubator of musical creativity and expression—the church.

Aretha Franklin

On visits back home to Detroit to visit family, Franklin became reacquainted with family friend Ted White. Things between them progressed so quickly that she was married in 1961 at the age of nineteen. She was captivated by his sophistication—he was a Detroit-based music promoter. Shortly after their marriage and through the mid-1960s, he became Franklin’s manager and would bring in new musicians to back her. He also became the father to her third child. For her second album with Columbia, The Electrifying Aretha Franklin, Hammond changed his approach, surrounding her with a big band, complete with horns and strings. Released in 1962, it produced three hit singles. Franklin is conﬁdent on “You Made Me Love You” and noteworthy on “I Told You So,” and the record also contains some blues-oriented tunes such as “Blue Holiday” and “Just For You.” The album produced her lone Top 40 pop single during the Columbia years, “Rock-a-bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody.” During the summer of that year, she appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival along with Carmen McRae, Duke Ellington, Clara Ward Gospel Singers, and the Thelonius Monk quartet, among other musical luminaries. Some critics contend that during her Columbia years, Franklin wanted to continue with gospel material but that the label was pushing her toward poporiented material and production values. Hammond, however, was clear from the beginning about his intentions of producing Franklin as a jazz singer with gospel roots. As Franklin’s career progressed, Hammond became less involved. Executives thought he was too out of touch with the youth and not able to create a huge hit for her, but Hammond said that Columbia wanted to turn her into a pop star, a move he disagreed with. Hammond contended that he always knew she had potential to be a real musical powerhouse, with the ability to write, arrange, and sing. Once Hammond was out of the picture, Robert Mersey worked on her next three albums, including the August 1962 release The Tender, the Moving, the Swinging Aretha Franklin, which features a take on “Try a Little Tenderness,” and the Billie Holiday standard “God Bless the Child.” Another track, “Don’t Cry Baby,” spent a week on the pop chart at number 92, and “Try a Little Tenderness” hit number 100. Things continued in a generally tender musical direction with Laughing on the Outside, an album of all ballads, including Johnny Mercer and Hoagy Carmichael’s classic “Skylark,” for example, and a song she and White wrote together, “I Wonder (Where You Are Tonight).” Her ﬁnal album for Columbia, Unforgettable, released in March 1964, was a tribute to Dinah Washington who died unexpectedly in December 1963. It has been referred to as her most inspired and serious project for Columbia. After Mersey, she was turned over to producer Clyde Otis, whom Columbia thought would bring Franklin to a wider audience via pop and R&B material. Their ﬁrst album together, Runnin’ Out of Fools, released in late 1964, hit eighty-four and became her second-highest charting album at the time. Columbia hoped that those who were buying Dionne Warwick albums would start

127

128

Women Icons of Popular Music

buying Franklin ones, too, but it didn’t happen. Most of the later releases for Columbia were the result of the label scrambling to cash in on whatever material they had from previous recording sessions, and they are, according to critics, for the most part artistically unremarkable. The Columbia years can best be characterized by a continual experiment with jazz, big band, show tunes, and blues material. These years do illustrate her versatility but do not yet show her strengths at the piano or her potential as a creative collaborator. Additionally, Franklin was frustrated by the label’s erratic marketing strategy, which seemed to change with each new release. About these years, Franklin said in her autobiography, “I’ve never been easy to categorize, nor do I like being categorized, but I suppose you could say my early style was a combination of blues, gospel-based jazz, and rhythm and blues” (Franklin and Ritz 1999, 86). Despite these issues, Franklin’s career was gaining her attention, and by most accounts, she seemed patient and conﬁdent of her eventual success. Her career thus far showed how many men were involved in deciding her fate, and the degree to which they helped or hurt her could be debated. For example, White, her husband-manager, admitted he had a hand in getting Hammond out of the picture (Bego 2001, 54). By the end of the decade, her relationship with White became especially contentious. As her manager, he made money from her career and often fought with her father (who opposed their union to begin with) and with Columbia (which often considered White a hindrance and did not like his headstrong ways). Franklin found herself frequently in the middle, but when she contested White’s authority, he often became abusive. Franklin’s career was at an early crossroads; her marriage would come to one later in the decade. The Atlantic Years By the time her contract with Columbia was up, Franklin had garnered a fair amount of attention and praise, but she had not seen a fair amount of money, partially because of White and partially because of erratic sales and marketing. Those years were not nearly as successful as her time with Atlantic would be. Franklin seemed ready for a change. About this juncture, she has said, “It’s the rough side of the mountain that’s easiest to climb. The smooth side doesn’t have anything for you to hang on to” (Jackson 2005, 169). Producer Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records pursued her and offered her a signiﬁcant $30,000 signing bonus. Franklin had an interest in the label, which was home to Ray Charles, Ruth Brown, Isaac Hayes, Otis Redding, and Wilson Pickett. Wexler quickly went to work and connected her with a small recording studio, Fame Studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, with arranger Arif Mardin and engineer Tom Dowd. He went back to basics, with the strategy of putting Aretha back on the piano and letting her “wail.” Additionally, Wexler had Franklin choose or write all the material for the album—something that had

Aretha Franklin

not happened on her Columbia albums, even though she did have approval over the material selected for her. She worked harmonies out with her sisters, Erma and Carolyn, on her Fender Rhodes keyboard at home. Her ﬁrst single was “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You),” whose success became the stuff of legend. Reportedly, Franklin came in, knew what she wanted to do, and arranged, performed, and recorded the song in two hours. Wexler pressed a handful of copies and distributed it to some deejays, who started playing the song before the rest of the album was even ﬁnished. Much of Franklin’s work during the latter part of the 1960s was with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Session. Richie Unterberger of All Music Guide summed up the sessions thusly: “The combination was one of those magic instances of musical alchemy in pop: the backup musicians provided a much grittier, soulful and R&Bbased accompaniment for Aretha’s voice, which soared with a passion and intensity suggesting a spirit that had been allowed to ﬂy loose for the ﬁrst time” (Unterberger). Franklin’s career really took off with Atlantic records. She had ten Top 10 hits in about an eighteen-month time period, starting in early 1967. She also had a fairly consistent production of other respectable hits over the course of the next ﬁve years. Her years with Atlantic, characterized by the helpful hands of Wexler, Mardin, and Dowd, were exceptionally productive. Her choice of material helped keep her career artistically interesting and creatively stimulating, as she went from originals, gospel, and blues to pop and to rock covers, encompassing such diverse artists as Sam Cooke and the Drifters to The Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel. It seemed that Wexler “got” her and was able to work with her talent, ﬁnding homes for her songs. Franklin’s image has very much been shaped by the messages contained in her hits. “Respect,” for example, can be read as an anthem—she certainly sees it that way—a declaration of black pride, feminist strength, or at the very least, personal dignity in the face of an unjust relationship characterized by a power imbalance. Franklin conveys a no-nonsense, smart, strong persona, one who refuses to be a victim. Throughout the legendary song, Franklin asserts that she has the upper hand, singing in the ﬁrst verse “All I’m askin’/Is for a little respect.” Flipping the gender perspective—the song was written and recorded by Otis Redding in 1965—added a whole new meaning. Her sisters are credited with adding the refrain “sock it to me,” further personalizing what has become perhaps her most well-known song. Franklin was riding high— “Respect” hit number one on both the Pop and Black singles charts, and the record it appeared on, I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You), peaked at number one on the Black Albums chart and number two on the Pop Albums chart. Such success was no small feat for a debut on a new label, but no doubt it also substantiated not only the groundwork laid by her Columbia years but also her own hard work and that of the studio gurus who let Aretha be Aretha. Less than six months after I Never, Atlantic released Aretha Arrives in August with eleven new songs. Again, Franklin’s sisters Carolyn and Erma

129

130

Women Icons of Popular Music

sang backup on some selections. One of the singles, “Baby I Love You,” written by Ronnie Shannon, became another million-seller like “Respect.” Franklin —Otis Redding, upon hearing was ﬁnally becoming a huge star, but she was focused Franklin’s version of “Respect.” on her music and bored by its business aspects. She was a tremendous success, toured heavily in North and South America, and ﬁnally got to play the Apollo Theater. The city of Detroit designated February 18, 1968, Aretha Franklin Day, and Dr. King, for whom she had sung at rallies in the past, came to pay her a surprise visit, solidifying her importance as an African American icon. Her next record, Lady Soul, was released in January 1968 and was chockablock with hits, too, from the funky love-obsession theme of “Chain of Fools,” written by Don Covay, to the Carole King and Gerry Gofﬁn composition “(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman,” another song with which she is strongly identiﬁed. Mark Dobkin called the album “a perfect expression of her musical personality” (Dobkin 2004, 233). “Chain of Fools” went to number one on the Billboard black singles chart and number two on pop singles and “Natural Woman” hit number two on Billboard’s black singles and eight on pop singles. Franklin’s sister Carolyn wrote “Ain’t No Way” for the album and Franklin wrote “Since You’ve Been Gone (Sweet Sweet Baby).” She also sang the Ray Charles tune “Come Back Baby” and Curtis Mayﬁeld’s “People Get Ready.” Lady Soul proved Franklin was indeed the Queen of Soul, peaking at number one, two, and three on the black, pop, and jazz charts, respectively. Franklin was on a roll—Aretha Now followed, her fourth record in two years with Atlantic, and it, too, was a number one record on the black album charts. Aretha Now included a stellar cover of Dionne Warwick’s “I Say a Little Prayer,” which hit number three on the black singles chart. The continued success enabled her to tour Europe; Aretha in Paris came out in 1968 too. During these years, however, Franklin was having a difﬁcult time in her personal life. Time magazine put her on the cover in June 1968 and printed what Franklin termed erroneous information about her mother abandoning the family, which she said Cissy Houston (who was singing backup frequently during these years for Franklin with the Sweet Inspirations) and Gladys Knight fabricated. The Time article also contended that White had been violent with her. He even went so far as to sue the magazine. Franklin also said Time posited the idea that she sang particular songs because of her experience, another idea she disputed, saying, “I am Aretha, upbeat, straight-ahead, and not to be worn out by men and left singing the blues” (Franklin and Ritz 1999, 123). Many critics, however, agree that it is easy to imagine she was singing the blues because she was living them and that her family was concerned about her during this time. Around the time of the article, Franklin was twenty-six years old and had achieved remarkable success. But she had dealt with the tragic deaths of two of her idols, Dinah Washington and Sam Cooke, who

That little girl done took my song away.

Aretha Franklin

131

was shot by a motel owner in what can be best classiﬁed as a misunderstanding. She also had had her Inside every woman, there’s third child, Teddy, but because of her career’s an Aretha Franklin screaming demands left childrearing duties largely to her father to come out. —Lena Horne and grandmother “Big Mama.” Her relationship with White was failing and to cope she was chain-smoking, overeating, and having trouble with drinking (Bego 2001, 114). The stress played a contributing role in the cancellation of tour dates. To add to her stress, while she was going through her divorce in 1969, her father was ﬁghting tax evasion charges and was arrested for possession of marijuana. Producer John Hammond once reportedly said that Franklin had “terrible luck” with men; somehow, they all made her suffer. Wexler said that Franklin’s personal life is so sad that he called her “the mysterious lady of sorrow” (Bego 2001, 8). Things were rough for Franklin, except for her career. Soul 69, released in 1969, earned some accolades, even if, despite the misnomer of the title, it was a deeper deviation into what Stanley Booth, writing in Rolling Stone, called “jazz-blues.” Booth wrote that “Aretha is more exciting and more believable than any other lady now singing” and commended Arif Mardin for “beautiful” arrangements. He also acknowledged Wexler for gathering members of the Miles Davis Quintet, the Count Basie Orchestra, and some of the usual players from her Memphis group, on a re-recording of a song she recorded for Columbia, “Today I Sing the Blues,” and the Smokey Robinson tune “Tracks of My Tears” (Booth 1969). A greatest hits package, Aretha’s Gold, came out in 1969 while she took some time off before working on This Girl’s In Love With You, which was released in 1970. The album had some heartbreaking material, including her own composition, the ballad “Call Me,” which she wrote after watching two lovers depart, and a cover of the Beatles song “Eleanor Rigby,” a rumination on loneliness that must have felt appropriate for her and which hit number seventeen. If This Girl was her catharsis, Spirit in the Dark, which also was released in 1970, could be considered her rebirth. Franklin took on B.B. King’s “The Thrill is Gone” and the strong and sassy “Why I Sing the Blues.” Spirit in the Dark boasts a record ﬁve songs written by her, including the title track. The abundance of horns shows a decidedly funkier vibe. “You and Me” became a number ﬁve Billboard R&B hit and peaked at thirty-seven on the pop charts, and her B.B. King cover nabbed her a number three R&B hit. Indeed, the record fared better on the R&B chart, peaking at number two, whereas it stopped at twenty-ﬁve on the pop album chart. Indeed, it seemed with White’s controlling methods out of the picture, Franklin was better off. In 1970 she had her fourth son, Kecalf, out of wedlock; the father was Ken Cunningham, an entrepreneur who served as her road manager in the late 1960s and who she nicknamed “Wolf.” She credits Wolf and his strong black pride for her return to a more natural look; she lost

132

Women Icons of Popular Music

weight, stopped shaving her eyebrows, and wore her hair in an Afro. The pair stayed together for about six years. Franklin spent much of the 1970s embracing diversity, with turns singing pop-oriented material, gospel, funk, and soul. In the early 1970s, she started to expand more into pop material: Some of her most notable hits include “Spanish Harlem,” which hit number two on the pop chart and number one on the R&B chart, and a cover of the Simon & Garfunkel song “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” which was a tremendous success when she sang it at the Grammy Awards telecast in 1971. At this time she also produced two well-regarded albums, Live at Filmore West, and the 1972 double gospel album Amazing Grace, recorded with James Cleveland and the Southern California Community Choir. It proved that Franklin was indeed still in touch with her gospel roots since the album hit the Top 10 and is regarded as one of the most successful gospel-pop crossover releases ever recorded. She had a few more hits after the success of 1972’s releases, including “Angel” from Hey Now Hey (1973) and the Stevie Wonder song “Until You Come Back to Me” from Let Me In Your Life (1974), which hit number one on the Black Singles chart and three on the pop charts in 1974. Franklin produced the album with Mardin and Wexler, but the inconsistent Hey Now Hey, in which Franklin herself shared production credits with Quincy Jones, was her ﬁrst Atlantic album not to make the top twenty-ﬁve. Her historic and productive span with Wexler came to an end, and her career entered something of a lull; their ﬁnal two projects are With Everything I Feel In Me (1974) and You (1975). There were conversations about having her sing disco, but the energy did not seem right. Franklin lamented that many of the traditional R&B artists had trouble in the days of disco. Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic Records presented Franklin with producer options for her next album, and she chose Curtis Mayﬁeld, who produced 1976’s Sparkle and 1978’s Almighty Fire, with 1977’s Sweet Passion, an album of show tunes, standards, and ballads, thrown in between. Franklin reﬂected on her choice as a good one, saying that Sparkle, for example, “proved the permanent power of rootsy rhythm and blues” (Franklin and Ritz 1999, 161). Around this time, Franklin and Wolf moved from their swanky apartment in New York City to Los Angeles in the hopes that a change of scenery would help matters, but they would soon go their separate ways. The next ten years were difﬁcult. Franklin and Wolf parted, and in 1978, after dating for a year and a half, she married actor Glynn Turman. Her father ofﬁciated at the ceremony. They did not have children together, and the marriage did not last long. In 1982 they separated, and in 1984 the marriage was ofﬁcially dissolved. Her brother Cecil had become her manager, and sometimes his decisions were contested by Wolf, creating tension. Franklin sang at the funerals of both Clara Ward and Mahalia Jackson, and while performing in Las Vegas in June 1979 learned that her father had been shot in a botched

I never left church. And never will. Church is as much a part of me as the air I breathe.

Aretha Franklin

burglary in his Detroit home. Her father slipped into a coma and stayed in it for ﬁve years. Zoomin’ into the 1980s with Pop Music, Securing Her Diva Status Much of the discussion of Franklin’s success seems to have been centered around the talented men, such as John Hammond and Jerry Wexler, she encountered who could make great things possible in her career. At the end of the 1970s when her contract with Atlantic was about to expire, she signed with Clive Davis’s new label, Arista, with the approval of her brother. Franklin said she needed money to take care of her father and wanted the personal involvement and expertise of Davis. (Her twelve years at Atlantic had been tremendously good to her; she earned more gold records and Grammy Awards than any other female African American performer at the time.) But toward the end of her stint with Atlantic, she expressed some frustration that her songs weren’t hitting, and she felt that her later releases were not adequately promoted. It was time for a change. We can add Clive Davis, president of Arista Records, to the list of men in high places who gave Franklin’s career a boost but this time in the pop milieu. Franklin yet again proved in the 1980s that she could transcend the standard she had established for herself, probably because that standard was based on diversity to begin with. As if to send a message that she was seeking even wider audiences for her work, Franklin started off the decade by appearing alongside other great artists such as John Lee Hooker in the blues comedy ﬁlm The Blues Brothers. In this cult hit starring Dan Akroyd and John Belushi, Franklin performed another one of her blockbusters, “Think,” and her appearance in the ﬁlm was well-regarded. Her ﬁrst release for Arista, 1980’s self-titled Aretha, was ﬁlled with samples from the pop music canon, including mediocre covers of the Doobie Brothers “What a Fool Believes” and a disco take on Otis Redding’s classic “I Can’t Turn You Loose,” which garnered her a Grammy nomination. During its most promising moments, though, Franklin’s preeminence as a singer is reestablished, especially on “United Together” and “Come to Me.” Produced by Chuck Jackson, the record also features a number of songs she wrote or co-wrote. It went to number six on the black albums chart and forty-seven on the pop albums chart. Love All the Hurt Away followed in 1981, with more covers such as “It’s My Turn,” the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” and the title track, a duet with George Benson. Some critics thought these records were unimaginative and disappointing, but they show a woman in transition and trying things out with a new label. Still, she was charting, as the album hit number four on the black albums chart and thirty-six on the pop charts. The pop-chart position could not have been what Arista wanted from a superstar such as Franklin, but they had to be pleased when “Hold On! I’m Comin’” gave her a Grammy Award for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance in 1981.

133

134

Women Icons of Popular Music

After the relatively tepid label debut Franklin requested songwriter and producer Luther Vandross, who had worked with Diana Ross and Dionne Warwick, to produce 1982’s Jump to It. The title track on Jump To It gave the forty-four-year-old Franklin her ﬁrst number one hit in the 1980s (on the R&B singles chart; it hit twenty-four on pop singles and four on the club play singles). It also featured two compositions by Vandross: “Love Me Right,” which barely missed the Top 20 R&B Singles chart at number twenty-two and “This is for Real.” Writing in Rolling Stone, Vince Aletti said that “Vandross recaptured the spirit of Aretha’s early work—its vibrancy, assurance and emotional impact—by keeping things simple (but quite sophisticated) and ﬁnding a common ground of instinct and inspiration” (Aletti 1985). The record peaked at number one on the R&B chart and twenty-three on the pop chart, which was a deﬁnite improvement. Franklin remained productive, following Jump to It with 1983’s Get It Right, which critics contend did not work overall, despite Vandross’s involvement and its consistently high production values. Its top spot on the Billboard 200 was 126, even though it had peaked at number 4 on the black albums chart and 21 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. Three singles, though, made the Top 10. Franklin and Vandross parted ways, and it wasn’t until 1985’s Who’s Zoomin’ Who?, produced by Narada Michael Walden, that once again Franklin was catapulted to superstar status. It features the rockmeets-soul duet “Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves,” with Annie Lennox, and “Freeway of Love,” a lighthearted, upbeat soul-based pop song that hit number three on the pop chart. For fans and critics who knew her music for two decades, “Freeway of Love” felt somewhat hollow. Aletti wrote that it felt like “an overcalculated pop song that tries very hard for funky abandon and ends up with a lot more ﬂash than feeling,” but remarked that Franklin seemed to enjoy the ride, punching up the song’s innuendoes (Aletti 1985). The song also earned her a Grammy Award for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. Who’s Zoomin’ Who? offers some unexpected choices, with standouts including “Sweet Bitter Love,” a twenty-year-old song she recorded ﬁrst for Columbia that she produced for this version, and “Integrity,” which revisits the themes of her chestnut “Respect.” Even the title track plays on the ideas of ﬁdelity and trust, with Franklin wisely coming out on top, entreating her love, with a dose of sass, to “take another look and tell me boy/Who’s zoomin’ who?” The song peaked at number two, and the track “Another Night” slipped into the Top 10 at number nine, which helped expose Franklin to a new generation of fans and signaled a comeback of sorts (see sidebar). Franklin also had a large hit with the duet “I Knew You Were Waiting For Me,” recorded with George Michael, which appeared on the 1986 Aretha— the second time she named an album after herself. The pairing was a good combination, as Michael started as one half of the soul-pop British group Wham! and eventually embarked on a very successful solo career. Keith Richards produced her other hit from this record, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” which

Aretha Franklin

The Comeback Artist When Aretha Franklin switched labels from Atlantic to Arista in 1980, it marked the beginning of one of the most successful phases of her career. Franklin’s reemergence signaled a comeback and suggested that female artists could find a new audience and remain culturally relevant later in their career. Others have pulled off similar coups, such as Kylie Minogue. The Australian dance/pop singer had languished in relative obscurity with U.S. audiences, although she had been a star in Europe and Australia when her cover of “The Loco-Motion” became a hit in 1987. A number of subsequent albums struggled to connect as well, and she signed with Parlophone, which released the enormously successful single “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” in 2001. Minogue won a Grammy in 2004 for Best Dance Recording for Body Language at the age of thirty-six. Mariah Carey’s five-octave voice earned her millions of record sales through the 1990s, leading to an $80 million contract with Virgin Records in 2001. But the decade was unkind to her, marked by dismal sales, public episodes of psychological instability, and a poorly received film appearance, Glitter. The album soundtrack, her first for Virgin, sold only 2 million copies worldwide compared to the 20 million worldwide of 1993’s Music Box. Carey established her own imprint, MonarC Music, at Island/DefJam, which released her disappointing 2002 Charmbracelet. After a three-year hiatus, 2005’s The Emancipation of Mimi hit the charts and sold 6 million; Carey was thirty-five. Janet Jackson struggles to achieve a true comeback after scoring multiplatinum albums starting from 1984’s Control through an alleged wardrobe malfunction at the 2004 Super Bowl halftime performance that inadvertently exposed her breast to millions of television viewers. Damita Jo was released two months later and only sold 2 million copies worldwide.

appeared in the Whoopi Goldberg ﬁlm of the same name. The album won her a 1987 Grammy for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, as well as another for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal for her song with Michael. Her other noteworthy release in the 1980s was her return to gospel with 1987’s One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism. The record featured appearances by Reverend Jesse Jackson; her brother, Reverend C.L. Franklin; Mavis Staples; and sisters Carolyn and Erma. One Lord became a number one–selling gospel album and even appeared on the R&B album chart at twenty-ﬁve. The decade, though, like the ones before it, was not easy for her on a personal level. She and Glynn Turman eventually divorced, and her father ﬁnally passed away that year. Shortly before her father’s death, she had a negative experience in a small plane that contributed to a fear of ﬂying. In later years,

135

136

Women Icons of Popular Music

She’s the voice of old America. Aretha is the blues, is gospel, is down-home, is fried chicken, is chitlins. Aretha is, put your feet up under the table. Aretha is, don’t worry about it baby, it’ll be alright.

fear forced her later to limit touring (she went by bus) and record in Detroit. Her sister Carolyn and brother Cecil also passed away from long bouts with breast cancer and lung cancer, respectively, within eight months of each other in 1988.

MISSION, MOTIVATION, PROCESS

—poet Nikki Giovanni

Critics have had somewhat of a difﬁcult time accurately describing Franklin’s talent as a singer. It is almost cliché to say she is passionate and pours her soul into her performances but harder still to pinpoint what about it makes the talent uniquely hers. Additionally, it is inaccurate to simply consider any of the powerful lyrics to songs she made famous without discussing the inﬂection and strength her voice brings to them. Jerry Wexler had some insight about what makes a great singer; “There are three qualities that make a great singer—head, heart and throat. The head is the intelligence, the phrasing. The heart is the emotionality that feeds the ﬂames. The throat is the chops, the voice. Ray Charles certainly has the ﬁrst two. Aretha, though, like Sam Cooke, has all three qualities” (Dobkin 2004, 2). Franklin views her singing, regardless of whether she’s just come off a performance that was lackluster or whether she has given it her all, as a personal offering. British journalist David Nathan, who has written extensively about Franklin, remarked, “Aretha’s phrasing was unlike anyone else’s; she fused the emotion of the church with a touch of jazz and added a heavy dose of the blues. The result made her a lasting original” (Nathan 1999, 71). Franklin’s recording career and performing career work hand-in-hand in terms of their inconsistencies. Sometimes Franklin could be spot-on and right in the moment; other times, her performances in concerts seemed disinterested and distracted. But after years of singing mostly jazz for Columbia, I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You represented a pivotal point in Franklin’s career. Even though the title track itself took off before the rest of the album was even recorded, that record also included such would-be classics as “Soul Serenade,” “Dr. Feelgood,” “Do Right Woman—Do Right Man,” and the song that worldwide is synonymous with her name almost more than any other, “Respect.” The record worked, too, because she does what she does best—sing unrestrained and play the piano. She was closely involved in the recording process, and she had ﬁnally found in the Fame Studio band a group of musicians with whom she could really gel. It is a sad irony that the title song tells the story of a woman who is in love with a dishonest, emotionally destructive man; several people have theorized that the song is about her relationship with White, even though Ronnie Shannon (one of White’s clients) wrote it, not Franklin. Additionally, the record is noteworthy because it is the mark of a woman who, not even thirty, had given birth to two children and was in the midst of a difﬁcult marriage. Franklin sings with experience and maturity. It is primarily

Aretha Franklin

137

an album about female sexual desire, something that was previously just the territory of blues artists such She has her own harmonic as Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday. Franklin took the concept, where she can go yearning of gospel, married it to the emotional impe- from blues to gospel. She has tus behind blues, and turned it into genre of her own. a very interesting way of Comparing her to other artists, including Diana Ross, melding, mixing up blues Franklin distinguishes herself. “[N]o female singer had chords and gospel chords, yet emerged as a bona ﬁde recording artist, directing the which throws the musicians action in the studio, producing cohesive, album-length off, until they get to learn works, until Aretha Franklin showed the world that the progression. It’s almost forty-one minutes (eleven tracks) of church-inﬂuenced like Billie Holiday or Frank soul music could be considered a thematically consistent and lasting work of passion and craftsmanship” Sinatra—you can’t keep (Dobkin 2004, 13–14). Wexler described her during their time. —Jerry Wexler the recording process as searching for herself and thus recording songs that reﬂected her life, because she kept a hand in selecting them or writing them herself. She had a sense of what she wanted to accomplish, particularly with her version of “Respect,” which Wexler said she worked out at home, before coming into the studio. He also attested to how easy it was to work with her in the studio. “With Aretha it always went like cream. If I had something to say that she didn’t agree with, we worked it out. There was never an impasse or any ridicule or abrasiveness. She had superb musicality, this gift—so unsophisticated, like a natural child, a natural woman” (Bego 2001, 91). Wexler’s guiding hand and musical acumen cannot to be underestimated. In a retrospective article in Rolling Stone, he wrote about his strong belief in letting a singer play his or her instrument of choice, even if their skills are not superlative, because it is about “bringing another element to the recording that is uniquely themselves. In Aretha’s case, there was no compromise in quality” (Wexler 2004). Franklin asserted in her autobiography, “Look over the selections . . . and you see that soul was the key. There was no compromising, no deliberate decision to go pop. As it turned out, these records crossed over and sold on the charts. But we weren’t trying to manipulate or execute any marketing plan. We were simply trying to compose real music from my heart” (Franklin and Ritz 1999, 111). Luckily, the public was receptive to her singular stew of gospel, jazz, blues, and soul. Rolling Stone magazine called I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You one of the forty essential albums of 1967. The song of the same title is remarkable because it represents what Franklin is so good at—it is direct and personal but at the same time, the “you” in question is somewhat ambiguous. Is the “you” another man? Is it God? Is it her father? The question is never answered, but the song is alternately propelled and then grounded by the Wurlitzer piano and Franklin’s voice. Franklin, though, is a skilled songwriter, a fact that has been often overlooked because she is such a strong interpretive singer. In her autobiography she remembered the genesis of two songs in particular, “Call Me” and “Day

138

Women Icons of Popular Music

Dreaming.” Franklin was honest, albeit cryptic at times, about her temptations and liaisons with other men, often using pseudonyms such as Mr. Mystique. The ballad “Call Me” came after witnessing a poignant encounter between a man and a woman who were obviously in love. They had to part and told each other “I love you,” but their gaze lingered. Franklin said, “Finally, the woman says, ‘Call me, call me the moment you get there . . . the hour . . . the minute . . . the second. . . . Call me baby.’ It was the story of me and Wolf” (Franklin and Ritz 1999, 133). The song, though, made for an emotionally draining recording session. Musician Jimmy Johnson said she was crying in the studio while recording the vocal. “The tears were splashing onto the music stand” (Dobkin 2004, 234). It was not the ﬁrst time Franklin wrote from the heart about romantic experiences. During her time with White she was entangled off and on with Dennis Edwards of the Temptations, but Wolf was secure enough to let her make her own decisions and sort out her feelings. After spending the evening with Edwards riding around in a limousine, Franklin was inspired to write “Day Dreaming,” whose lyrics recall “Day dreaming and I’m thinking of you” and the emotionally treacherous declaration “I want to be what he wants when he wants it and whenever he needs it.” Looking back on it in her autobiography, Franklin talks about how the lyrics reﬂect her naïveté. Nevertheless, the anecdotes she shares about her songwriting process do show that Franklin was writing from life experience.

LEGACY AND OTHER INTERESTS The music she has created in the 1990s and through the 2000s is best characterized as spotty and inconsistent, with a seven year-gap in between 1991’s What You See is What You Sweat and her subsequent studio release A Rose is Still A Rose in 1998. It is fair to say that nothing can compare to the output of her creative zenith in the late 1960s and through the early to mid-1970s—even her successful work with Arista in the early to mid-1980s pales against the complexity, nuance, and range of those Atlantic years. Nevertheless, Franklin has had some hits lately. In 1998, singer Lauryn Hill, formerly of the hip-hop group the Fugees, wrote and produced the funky, contemporary-sounding title track to Franklin’s album A Rose is Still a Rose. Franklin reﬂected on it, saying that it “speaks to women, stressing that self-esteem is not depending on anything else but you and service to others” and understanding that “the deepest validation comes from God” (Franklin and Ritz 1999, 246). The song became a number one dance hit, went to number ﬁve on the R&B chart and twenty-six on the Billboard Hot 100. Sean “Puffy” Combs, along with Narada Michael Walden and Jermaine Dupri, lent his hand at producing. The record topped out at number seven on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and hit thirty on the Billboard 200—no small feat for a woman in her late ﬁfties.

Aretha Franklin

Also in 1998, Franklin sang the Puccini aria “Nessun Dorma” as Luciano Pavarotti’s replacement at the Grammy Awards, a performance that surprised crowds. She discussed a cookbook she has planned, Switching in the Kitchen with Ree, and her own production company under Crown Productions and World Class Records, which at one point had planned to make a ﬁlm about the Reverend Jesse Jackson and a documentary about her father. In early 2001, Franklin was feted by VH-1 in a live performance show called Divas. Younger artists such as Mary J. Blige and Jill Scott paid tribute to the Queen of Soul along with other diva-like singers such as Shania Twain, Celine Dion, and Mariah Carey. In September 2003 she released So Damn Happy, which found her pairing up with Blige for a couple of songs, with esteemed producer and songwriter Burt Bacharach. Additionally, the album featured “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool,” a contribution from Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, whose work in the 1980s with Janet Jackson made her a star. In an interview with the New York Times, Franklin was enthusiastic about the record, her ﬁrst in ﬁve years, saying “some of it is hip-hop, some of it is traditional. It just works” (Weinraub 2003). Franklin even embarked on a limited tour in support of the album’s release. In spring 2007, Franklin oversaw auditions for the musical based on her life, Aretha: From these Roots, expected to open in Detroit. Franklin became an icon of African American success and female empowerment, partially due to the message of her music, her father’s job, and her relatively middle-class upbringing, despite her teen pregnancies and deceased mother. The early 1960s were also a time of increasing politicization in American culture. Because her father was friends with Martin Luther King Jr. and Adam Clayton Powell, Franklin sang at fundraisers in support of the burgeoning civil rights movement. Like many artists, Franklin parlays her beliefs into causes that help others. Franklin has donated to many charities, including Jesse Jackson’s Operation Breadbasket, the NAACP, Operation PUSH, UNICEF, and Easter Seals. She established the Aretha Franklin Scholarship Foundation, which awards scholarships to minority students in the Detroit area to help pay for college tuition. Because she grew up knowing from an early age that she was talented, Franklin felt it was just a matter of time before she became a big star—it was not a question of “if,” it was a question of “when.” That ambition truly sets her apart. In the later part of her career she has been honored repeatedly; her historic penchant for performing in ornate evening gowns, along with her legendary status, has earned her the title of “diva,” a moniker she happily embraces. Indeed, Franklin is a living legend whose work continues to inspire artists and ﬁnd younger audiences. Without Aretha, the careers of scores of other female soul singers simply would not be possible—chronicling her legacy would inadvertently require a mentioning of every female artist from Tina Turner and Diana Ross to Jennifer Lopez to Beyoncé Knowles to Mariah Carey and Alicia Keys, Missy Elliott, and Mary J. Blige.

139

140

Women Icons of Popular Music

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Aretha. Columbia, 1961 I Never Loved a Man The Way I Love You. Atlantic, 1967 Aretha Arrives. Atlantic, 1967 Lady Soul. Atlantic, 1968 Aretha Now. Atlantic, 1968 Soul ’69. Atlantic, 1969 Aretha Franklin at the Filmore West. Atlantic, 1971 Aretha’s Greatest Hits. Atlantic, 1971 Young, Gifted and Black. Atlantic, 1972 Amazing Grace. Atlantic, 1972 Jump to It. Arista, 1982 Who’s Zoomin’ Who? Arista, 1985 One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism. Arista, 1987 Queen of Soul: The Atlantic Recordings. Rhino, 1992 A Rose is Still a Rose. Arista, 1998

FURTHER READING Aletti, Vince. “Who’s Zoomin Who? Review.” Rolling Stone 455 (August 29, 1985). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/arethafranklin/albums/album/ 206141/review/5944690/whos_zoomin_who. Bego, Mark. The Queen of Soul: Aretha Franklin. New York: DaCapo Press, 2001. Booth, Stanley. “Soul 69. Review.” Rolling Stone 28 (March 1, 1969). Caulﬁeld, Keith. “Aretha Franklin Has Most Top 10, No. 1, R&B Albums.” Billboard (October 4, 2003). Dobkin, Mark. I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004. Franklin, Aretha, and David Ritz. Aretha Franklin: From These Roots. New York: Villard, 1999. Jackson, Buzzy. A Bad Woman Feeling Good: Blues and the Women Who Sing Them. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005. Nathan, David. The Soulful Divas: Personal Portraits of Over a Dozen Divine Divas, from Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin and Diana Ross to Patti LaBelle, Whitney Houston and Janet Jackson. New York: Billboard Books, 1999. Unterberger, Richie. “Aretha Franklin biography.” All Music Guide. Available online at wm04.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=ADFEAEE47817D849AA7E20C79A3E52DBB57DF702FE5AFB86112F0456D3B82D4BBD0E4FE06BC2A B81B0E57CAB7BAFFF26E85B0FD9CAE75CFDDA764C40&sql=11:jifpxqe5l dke~T1. Wexler, Jerry. “Aretha Franklin.” Rolling Stone online (April 15, 2004). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5940015/9_aretha_franklin.

Courtesy of Photofest

Emmylou Harris

142

Women Icons of Popular Music

OVERVIEW Although she came into the music business in the late 1960s, roughly around the same time as many other female singers and songwriters who went on to sell more records and earn a higher level of international acclaim than she (most notably her friend Linda Ronstadt), few artists have made the kind of impact on country and roots music as Emmylou Harris. Throughout her career, Harris has been known as a seeker of songs, for her gift for phrasing, and her beautiful, crystalline voice. Perhaps because her work on the whole is subtle and smart, larger commercial success has eluded her. Despite the fact that these attributes have not made her a household word, Harris’s accomplishments and her approach have inﬂuenced scores of other artists, earning her a coveted spot as a favorite artist among fellow musicians and songwriters, as well as music critics. Many other songwriters and singers revere her voice; most notably, she has been a collaborator with Gram Parsons and Neil Young. She started as a folk singer, but her country-rock work with Parsons sparked her curiosity, and her voice was noticed by Linda Ronstadt, who was instrumental in bringing Harris to the attention of the larger music community. From album to album, sometimes released against the current of popular music’s trends, Harris has followed the music that has interested her and, as the mark of a true artist, is not strictly guided or overwhelmingly concerned about album sales or whether a particular sound ﬁt a particular genre; her integrity guided her, along with her terriﬁc instincts. Harris is a trailblazer, and by the time her 2007 comprehensive retrospective album Songbird: Rare Tracks and Forgotten Gems was released, Harris became a genre unto herself, in a niche that she worked hard to carve out for herself, quietly and without excessive fanfare, over thirty years. Her approach to country music allowed many people to see beyond the stereotypes of the form, thus showing how inviting its history and its wealth of material could be to other artists who would then, in the 1990s, mine it for inspiration, stylistic cues, and songs to cover during live shows, as a signiﬁer of their roots-music credibility. Harris beneﬁted early on by working in the early 1970s with her mentor, the pioneer of “cosmic American music” Gram Parsons. He opened her eyes to the possibilities of country and rock and inspired her own exploration of the hybrid genre through a series of excellent, critically acclaimed, and commercially successful albums, starting with 1975’s Pieces of the Sky through the next decade. Her work as part of Trio with Ronstadt and Dolly Parton resulted in two albums and showed her gift for collaboration and harmony. She also has collaborated with numerous other artists from diverse genres of music, most recently a 2006 release with Mark Knopﬂer of Dire Straits, All the Roadrunning, which ended up on many critics’ best-of lists. Among critics and journalists, the word “crystalline” consistently surfaces as a description of her voice. In fact, Harris is continually sought out to sing backing vocals or duets on dozens of recordings with artists such as

Emmylou Harris

143

Willie Nelson, Roy Orbison, Bonnie Raitt, Bob Dylan, David Bromberg, Guy Clark, Neil Young, Elvis Cos- It’s always great to get tello, Rodney Crowell, Trisha Yearwood, Patty Grifﬁn, together with women, too; Roseanne Cash, Lyle Lovett, Bonnie Raitt, Garth when you spend most of your Brooks, Vince Gill, and many others. Her trailblazing life on a tour bus with men, ways have helped the careers of Lucinda Williams, it’s really nice to have some Gillian Welch, Alison Krauss, Neko Case, and other girl talk and girl time. female artists who incorporate varying degrees of —on the side benefits country, rock, folk, and bluegrass in their music, tinged of working with Parton and Ronstadt with a sense of loss, melancholy, self-reﬂection—and varying degrees of Southern gothic—in their lyrics. Harris has lent her voice to backing vocals on albums by the now-defunct, all-female indie hip-hop band Luscious Jackson, as well as on City Beach, the solo album of one of the band’s songwriters, Jill Cunniff. She has also co-written several songs with Cunniff, who appears as a guest performer on Harris’s album Red Dirt Girl. Whereas Harris has been a reliable and valued collaborator for many artists— her voice instantly lends an element of beauty and grace to a song—her own body of work also has been critically hailed; she seems incapable of releasing a bad album. Harris has earned twelve Grammy Awards and record sales of more than 15 million albums worldwide. She has been nominated for twentyfour Country Music Awards and won three. Harris’s career had a serious jolt as a result of appearing on the soundtrack to the quirky 2000 Joel and Ethan Coen ﬁlm O Brother, Where Art Thou? (see sidebar). Records that she released subsequent to appearing on the monstrously successful, award-winning soundtrack also saw a signiﬁcant rise in sales, especially the earthy but lush Red Dirt Girl, which was released just a few months before the ﬁlm, and 2003’s Stumble Into Grace. Harris’s longevity as a woman whose music transcends genres seems assured. Her tone has been described as immaculate, her phrasing gentle in The New Rolling Stone Album Guide, which may not sit well with purists of rock or country.

EARLY YEARS Harris was born the second of two children to a military family stationed in Birmingham, Alabama. Her father, Walter “Bucky” Rutland Harris was a Marine Corps pilot and her mother, Eugenia Murchison Harris, came from a family of farmers in Alabama. She spent much of her childhood moving around until the family moved to Woodbridge, Virginia, while she was a teenager. But when she was about ten years old, her father was ﬁghting in the Korean War and was taken as a prisoner. After being held for over a year, her father returned, but the experience left a lasting impression on her. He was honored by the Marines for his efforts and passed away in 1993.

144

Women Icons of Popular Music

Harris learned the piano as a child and played saxophone in the high school marching band. Before she discovered folk music, she felt a kinship with Edith Piaf and Billie Holiday’s work. She was attracted not only to their voices but also the drama and tragedy associated with their personal lives. As a teenager, she started to learn guitar after a cousin received one for Christmas in the early 1960s. Inspired by the work of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Pete Seeger, Harris asked for one too, and her grandfather gave her a Kay guitar, which she has kept. She also listened to country music, albeit somewhat unintentionally—her older brother was a fan of it, and it was always on the radio. Because of her brother she heard Buck Owens, Kitty Wells, and bluegrass. She also credits artists like Hank Williams and the work of Ian and Sylvia as part of her inﬂuences. In high school, she was a cheerleader and won beauty contests. She graduated from high school as valedictorian. A serious student, Harris admitted that she did not really go out on dates in high school and eventually parted ways with her cheerleading set of friends. Harris yearned for something more bohemian or left-of-center. “You were either a homecoming queen or a real weirdo. I was a 16-year-old WASP wanting to quit school and become Woody Guthrie” (Brown 2004, 17). Harris won a theater/drama scholarship to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro as a result of winning the Miss Woodbridge beauty pageant in her hometown. There, she began to study music seriously, learning the songs of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. She acquired a Gibson J-50 that was easier to play than her Kay. Her ﬁrst paid performance took place in summer 1965 at a roots festival in Steele, Alabama. She was paid not in cash but with a platter full of ripe fruit. In college, she started listening to Tom Rush, Robert Johnson, Son House, and other acoustic blues artists. She frequented a place called the Red Door, which featured live music. There, she met student Mike Williams with whom she formed a duo, but eventually they parted ways. Harris was feeling out of sorts and restless, and she was tired of doing the right thing and being good. With no interest in the social scene of partying and drinking and with a waning interest in the possibilities of a drama career, Harris turned her attention to music. Eventually, after a few semesters Harris quit school and decided to pursue music full time. She moved to New York to join its folk music scene, which was waning and changing to a psychedelic, more rock-oriented music. She stayed in New York and worked in the clubs in Greenwich Village, where she became a regular at Gerde’s Folk City. Some of her similarly thoughtful folk musicians and songwriters from this period include Tom Slocum, David Bromberg, Paul Siebel, and Jerry Jeff Walker. Harris was invited to perform a few songs for A&M Records, the label of the Flying Burrito Brothers, in 1968, but they didn’t sign her. In 1969 she married songwriter Tom Slocum, and by the next year released her debut LP called Gliding Bird—an apt description of her soaring,

Emmylou Harris

beautiful voice. It was described as a folk record, but one that bore the inﬂuence of Joni Mitchell. Harris wrote a few of the songs but also covered Bob Dylan’s “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,” and, at the urging of her producer Ray Ellis, the Hal David/Burt Bacharach tune “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.” Selecting a Hank Williams song and a Dylan tune showed that her instincts for material were good. Harris was admittedly green and has said she did not have a direction and did not receive sufﬁcient guidance from her label; the album was recorded in a mere three days. Her life, however, and her career quickly became more complicated. Jubilee Records, the label that released her album, went out of business not too long after its release, and Harris became pregnant with a daughter. During her pregnancy, her marriage began failing. After moving to Nashville, the pair divorced after about two years of marriage. Struggling to make ends meet while being a single mom, Harris worked in Nashville waiting tables and singing occasionally, but ultimately moved back to live with her parents, who had a farm near Washington, DC. Fewer than 2000 copies of the record were reportedly sold at the time, and until its reissue in 1980, it was extremely difﬁcult to acquire. Harris has, for the most part, disowned it as part of her collection and has been disinclined to discuss it; she is equally taciturn when it comes to questions about her love life and her marriages, of which there have been three. She worked during the day and at night, gradually, she started to perform again, ﬁnding a vibrant musical community, especially bluegrass, in the DC area. Her ﬁrst foray was as part of a trio with guitarist Gerry Mule and bassist Tom Guidera. During one of their gigs at a club called Clyde’s, some of the members of the country-rock group the Flying Burrito Brothers were in the audience. Parsons, who was the band’s founder, had recently left the group, but Chris Hillman, its current leader and a former member of the Byrds, was taken with Harris’s voice. She was singing “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.” Reportedly, he considered asking her to join the Burrito Brothers but instead, he quit the group and joined Stephen Stills’s group Manassas. In the meantime, he suggested to Parsons that he meet with Harris; he had been looking for a female singer for his solo work. They had trouble ﬁguring out how to ﬁnd Harris, but thanks to her babysitter, who was at a Flying Burrito Brothers concert and had given Parsons Harris’s phone number, a connection was made. Parsons and Harris met—he and his wife came up to see her and her trio play, and they instantly hit it off. He joined her in the second set of material. He was especially taken with her ability to articulate the nuances of country singing, even though she had much to learn yet. Harris said on her ofﬁcial Web site that she has no idea what would have happened if Parsons hadn’t come into her life. He introduced her to country music in a new way. She said she got into it “more by osmosis—I didn’t really feel it in my heart. I didn’t really understand it until I worked with Gram” (Skanse 1998).

145

146

Women Icons of Popular Music

CAREER PATH Her career started to take off once she started working with Parsons, who was starting at the time to really bring together country music. She sang harmony on his debut solo record G.P., released in 1972. She then toured with his backup group, the Fallen Angels. In 1973, she worked with him on his stellar album Grievous Angel. Unfortunately, though, Parsons passed away a few weeks after the recording sessions for the album were complete. He died on September 19 of a drug- and alcohol-related overdose in a hotel room outside the Joshua Tree National Monument in California. Harris was bereft; at the time of his death, she had left California and gone back to DC, with the intention of moving to California with her daughter Hallie. Instead, Harris stayed in DC and regrouped with Tom Guidera to form the Angel Band. Don Schmitzerle, who worked at Warner Brothers, heard Harris on a Parsons record and sent an A&R rep, Mary Martin, to investigate. She called Brian Ahern, who had recently worked with Anne Murray and had helped her hit the pop charts. He met with Harris in Maryland where he recorded four sets of her and her band at the Red Fox Inn with a portable device. It was enough to pique his interest in producing her record; in fact, Ahern worked with her on her next ten records and soon after the release of Pieces of the Sky became her second husband. Signed by Warner Brothers to the Reprise label, the band moved to Los Angeles to work on her major label debut, Pieces of the Sky, released in February 1975. The album’s material comes from an array of covers from artists such as The Beatles and Merle Haggard. There was no great groundswell of response to the album’s ﬁrst single, the waltzy, weepy ballad “Too Far Gone,” so Warner Brothers brought in promotional folks from the pop side of the label and an independent promoter, Wade Pepper, who had worked wonders with Anne Murray’s “Snowbird.” Consequently, in 1975, the album’s second single “If I Could Only Win Your Love,” a cover of a Louvin Brothers song, became her ﬁrst top ﬁve hit. Nearly four years later, Warner Brothers re-released “Too Far Gone,” which that time peaked at number thirteen on the country charts. Pieces of the Sky contained only one Harris composition, an ode to “fallen angel” Gram Parsons called “Boulder to Birmingham.” Harris’s version of the Beatles tune “For No One,” was reimagined with a slower, more ponderous pacing; it feels more contemplative than the original. Harris showed a sign of whimsy, too: She sang “Queen of the Silver Dollar,” a song by children’s author and songwriter Shel Silverstein. In the early part of Harris’s career, she could not escape being mentioned by critics in nearly the same breath as Linda Ronstadt. Her Pieces of the Sky was compared to Linda Ronstadt’s record Heart Like a Wheel, which also dabbled in country sounds. But more than Ronstadt’s record, Harris’s album looks back at country’s “old warhorses,” as they were called, and their voices are different. Harris’s voice, although feminine like Ronstadt’s, sounds more fragile; at times her reedy soprano sounds like glass that is

Emmylou Harris

147

about to break. Critics thought the more challenging the material became, the more moving Harris’s per- If you live by the charts, you formance became. Through the years, her voice would die by the charts. gradually morph into something richer, and occasionally rougher, but it would always possess that pure, unfettered quality. Pieces of the Sky marked Harris’s ﬁrst in a long line of either gold or platinum releases that would ensue through the rest of the 1970s. Elite Hotel, Luxury Liner, and Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town continued to showcase her talent and helped develop her reputation as a country-rock pioneer. Harris’s second album, Elite Hotel, was released in 1976 and used the Hot Band as her backup group. The Hot Band boasted some musicians who had worked with Elvis Presley—James Burton and Glen D. Hardin—along with a songwriter, little known at the time, named Rodney Crowell, who also played rhythm guitar. Elite Hotel featured smart covers of Patsy Cline’s “Sweet Dreams” and Buck Owens’s “Together Again,” both of which became number one country hits in the ﬁrst year of the record’s release. Here, too, Harris takes on Flying Burrito Brothers with “Sin City” and “Wheels” but Stephen Holden of Rolling Stone said, with a tone of disappointment, that she brought a “honeyed sadness” to those tunes, whereas the originals suggested “an ongoing personal battle with the cosmos” (Holden 1976). But such differences in interpretation inform the motivation of an interpretive singer—she leaves her own indelible emotional blueprint on the song. Overall, it is a consistently engaging album, with smart use of a backing band and smart material, including another Beatles cover, “Here, There and Everywhere.” In a review of Elite Hotel, Holden wrote that “Harris sings like a more ethereal and fragile Linda Ronstadt, her voice perpetually on the edge of tears” (Holden 1976). Although the comparison to Ronstadt is apt—the singers are friends and tread in similar circles and style—Harris’s voice, while sweet like Ronstadt’s, is slightly more reserved than the rich fullness of Ronstadt’s. The difference between the two singers is more like comparing a weathered, aged whiskey to a full-bodied, rich, and deep red wine. Soon after, Harris released the Christmas song “Light of the Stable,” which had vocals from Neil Young, Dolly Parton, and Linda Ronstadt. Harris sang on Young’s and Ronstadt’s albums frequently, songs such as “Star of Bethlehem” and “The Sweetest Gift,” respectively. She also sang on Dylan’s album Desire and appeared in Martin Scorcese’s documentary ﬁlm of the Hot Band’s ﬁnal performance. In 1977, Harris released her third album, Luxury Liner, which became yet another number one country album and went to twenty-one on the pop album charts. Critically, it was well-regarded. Rolling Stone reviewer Peter Herbst said that Luxury Liner was her “apex; superbly chosen songs, hot picking, and a deﬁnitive representation of her plangent, romantic sensibility” (Herbst 1977). On the album she visits more material from the Louvin Brothers with a song called

148

Women Icons of Popular Music

“When I Stop Dreaming” and also has a selection from the Carter Family. Her interpretations of Townes Van Zandt’s “Pancho and Lefty,” about a pair of grifters, and Chuck Berry’s “(You Can Never Tell) C’est La Vie,” which was a number six country hit, continue to show a musicologist’s gifted approach to unearthing smart material. The Parsons-penned title track, for example, was relatively unknown, appearing on an album by one of his early bands. Her backup band for Luxury Liner consists of Crowell, Ricky Skaggs, and Albert Lee. The album cover, too, is striking. It is a close-up of Harris, with the light hitting the side of her face and her long, dark hair framing her face beautifully. Harris’s fourth record, Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town, came out in 1978 and produced her third number one single, the spunky country barroom declaration, written by Delbert McClinton, “Two More Bottles of Wine.” The album marks the ﬁrst time she does not cover Parsons material and the ﬁrst time she does not include any pop music covers, rendered country style. Instead, Harris returns to Parton’s oeuvre with “To Daddy,” which nabbed her a number three spot on the country charts, and takes on a couple of Crowell songs and two by Jesse Winchester, including “Defying Gravity” and “My Songbird.” Greil Marcus, a rock critic with very particular taste and one who seems to sense the subtleties of an artist such as Harris, dismissed her singing as too tentative and unoriginal, and Quarter Moon as “a make-out album for the sensitive” (Marcus 1978). Regardless of Marcus’s opinions, the record was a number three country hit and a number twenty-nine pop album hit, even though it did not yield any signiﬁcant charting singles. After this record, Crowell left the group, and Ricky Skaggs stepped in to become his replacement as her singing partner. For Harris the addition of Skaggs just meant there were more possible inﬂuences to investigate and more possible directions to take her career. In a way, Quarter Moon can be interpreted as an album that shows the inklings of the more traditional material she would focus on in the near future. Harris’s 1979 album Blue Kentucky Girl shows a movement toward bluegrass and more traditional, unfettered country music, which reinforced the idea that at her heart she was deﬁning herself as a country artist. “I’m considered a pop artist, but I don’t really get played on pop stations. I’ve never had any pop hit singles. I consider myself a country artist, but country artists consider me pop,” Harris said at the time (Brown 2004, 125). Harris took on Willie Nelson and the classic “Save the Last Dance for Me,” as well as “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues,” for which she received harmony assistance from Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt. Rolling Stone reviewed the album, which seemed to echo some of the sentiments Marcus expressed about her previous release, claiming that her approach was too measured; she was singing the songs, but somehow remained removed from their emotional content. Nevertheless, Blue Kentucky Girl nabbed another number one single for “Beneath Still Waters,” a Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance, and hit

Emmylou Harris

149

number three on the country chart and forty-three on the pop album chart. The Grammy Award actually Look what she’s accomplished: helped propel the album sales, which had initially She freed country music from stereotypes and showed lagged for several months. The next year’s work, the 1980 album Roses in the rockers that country music Snow, continued to delve further into traditional was okay. music and was best described as an acoustic bluegrass —Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum director Kyle Young album. Working with the multitalented Ricky Skaggs again, the record came together easily. Harris said that her label intimated that the record would seal the end of her career, so risky was the material. In 1980, she recorded a duet with Roy Orbison, “That Lovin’ You Feelin’ Again,” which became a Top 10 hit, and one that sounds more like a soft-rock hit than a rootsy country tune. Nevertheless, the pair won a Grammy for Best Country Vocal Performance, Duo or Group. The record hit number two on the country charts and twentysix on the pop album charts. She released Light of the Stable at the end of the year, which is a holiday collection. On the heels of that release, Harris stopped touring to raise her second daughter, Meghann. To hold over fans, the records Cimarron and Evangeline were released in 1981 and comprise mostly previously unreleased songs, duets, and outtakes from the Trio sessions with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt. Cimarron became a number six Billboard country album and yielded two country singles, “If I Needed You” and “Born to Run”; Evangeline hit number ﬁve on the country album charts and twenty-two on the pop album charts. The 1980s: Years of Transition In the early 1980s, punk and new wave started to chip away at the musicbuying audience, and country music was starting to develop a more slick, unabashedly pop-crossover sound, with Dolly Parton leading the way. After Evangeline’s release in 1981 Harris lost Skaggs to his solo career. He was replaced by Barry Tashian, who had been the front man for the rock band the Remains, popular in the 1960s. In 1982 drummer John Ware left the group. She and The Hot Band released a live album Last Date, named as an homage for its successful single “(Lost His Love) On Our Last Date,” which set lyrics to Floyd Cramer’s instrumental song. Harris’s marriage to Ahern was starting to dissolve. Her ﬁnal release with Ahern as producer was the 1983 release White Shoes. It was a surprising mix of material, even for the eclectic Harris, with covers of Donna Summer’s disco hit “On the Radio” and Sandy Denny’s “Old-Fashioned Waltz.” The album peaked at twenty-two on the country charts and produced three separate charting country singles in “Drivin’ Wheel,” “In My Dreams,” and “Pledging My Love.” The latter two were number nine hits, and “In My Dreams” earned Harris a Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance.

150

Women Icons of Popular Music

Harris moved to Nashville with her daughters and met up with Paul Kennerley, a singer/songwriter on whose album The Legend of Jesse James she had sung backup. The two worked together on her 1985 album, which was a commercial failure but of autobiographical importance. Called The Ballad of Sally Rose—Harris’s alias/pseudonym—the concept album was inspired by Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska; other critics noted that it seemed to emulate the Willie Nelson album The Red Headed Stranger. Each song tells the story of a character, or persona, and each persona has characteristics that can be read as an embodiment of Harris herself: a young girl from a small town with expectations of a better life joins a band and falls in love with another musician who is ultimately killed. The series of songs are not strictly autobiographical but rather a ﬁctionalization of some of her experiences. Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt make appearances. The Ballad of Sally Rose is useful when looking at her whole repertoire because it marks a strong songwriting effort even though it was not ﬁnancially successful. Despite the difﬁculty, the album did yield some happiness for her personal life, albeit inadvertently. As with her previous collaboration with Ahern, her work with Kennerley led to marriage—the pair wed shortly after they toured in support of The Ballad of Sally Rose. He suggested her next album put her voice as the centerpiece, and the album Angel Band was a quiet, introspective collection of country music gospel-spirituals, issued in 1987, which peaked at twenty-three on the country charts. Angel Band featured Carl Jackson, Vince Gill, and Emory Gordy and came on the heels of 1986’s Thirteen, which fared even better on those charts, hitting number nine but staying off the radar of most pop audiences at 157 on the Billboard 200. In 1987, the most eagerly anticipated project from Harris ﬁnally came to fruition: Trio, the collaboration among Harris, Linda Ronstadt, and Dolly Parton. Harris arguably had the lowest proﬁle of the three in the eyes of the average record buyer, who would know Parton from country music and ﬁlm and Ronstadt from her seeming unending appetite for good songs. But for these three gilded-voiced females, the project earned them all a certain cachet and plenty of critical accolades. Harris and Ronstadt, friends since the early 1970s, both loved the work of Parton and describe the ﬁrst time the three sang together as “magical.” The trio approach worked so well because they share a love of that mountain music sound. The record earned all three women a Grammy for Best Country Performance by Duo or Group with Vocal. Before the end of the decade, she released 1989’s Bluebird, which is a somewhat uneven collection. Reaching a New Generation, Reinventing Herself Again In 1990, Harris released Brand New Dance, which more than anything else shows her as an artist in transition; the material was good but not outstanding. Harris had left much of her previous sound behind, but she had not yet met with the artists and producers who would invigorate her career and give

Emmylou Harris

her new directions. With the group the Nash Ramblers, an acoustic bluegrass group, Harris released a live album in 1992 called At the Ryman, named for one of country music’s well-known concert halls at the Grand Ole Opry. The album was recorded there and a television special aired that contained footage from performances and recording sessions. The record earned her a Grammy. After that release, she switched to Elektra Records. Her ﬁrst release with them was called Cowgirl’s Prayer, which Rolling Stone said “goes to the heart of her talents as an interpretive singer,” showcasing covers of Leonard Cohen and Lucinda Williams (Coleman and Kemp 2004). In 1994, Warner Brothers released Songs of the West, a related collection of previously released work that is tied to ideas of the West—mythological, musical, or otherwise. In the mid-1990s, rock musicians with progressive, proliﬁc tendencies such as Old 97s, Wilco, Ryan Adams, and others were putting out records that bore country inﬂuences, and the mish-mash of folk, rock, and country came to be known as alt-country or Americana. Emmylou Harris’s career received another jolt when she turned in another artistically intriguing direction with the release of her 1995 album Wrecking Ball. The moody, atmospheric sound can be attributed to production from Daniel Lanois, known for his work with U2 and Peter Gabriel. Her choice was important for a number of reasons. Harris admitted she was looking for a change in her musical direction and knew of Lanois’s work with Bob Dylan. Of the process of working with Lanois, she said, “It was rejuvenating on a lot of different levels: he introduced me to more turbulent rhythms, yet in songs I was still very comfortable with. As a singer, it was very stimulating emotionally.” Wrecking Ball was not likely to gain her continued airplay on country radio. Harris was not concerned. “[M]y attitude by then was: ‘You think you’re breaking up with me, but actually I’m breaking up with you’ ” (Sunday Herald 2006). And what a smooth break-up Wrecking Ball became. Harris was at the point in her career where many other artists are content to survive on greatest hits releases and other less rigorous or creatively engaging work. Instead of resting on her laurels and forging a career as a guest vocalist for perpetuity, in Wrecking Ball she presented an adventurous work that embraced world rhythms and acoustic instruments. It also felt more singularly grounded in a folk/roots feel that softly pushed the boundaries of country music and rock music. The hand of Lanois can be felt in the prominent role of percussion, something that is emphasized especially in his work with U2, whose drummer, Larry Mullen Jr., plays on the album. The title track, penned by Neil Young, features his backing vocals. The combination of their voices, along with the lyrics in the chorus, is haunting: A request to meet at the wrecking ball is followed by “I’ll wear something pretty and white/And we’ll go dancing tonight.” The song evokes the sense that the narrator is willingly walking into a difﬁcult emotional situation—the idea of a wrecking ball is a powerful, pervasive metaphor for the album, which came on the heels of her split from Kennerley. Other standout covers on the record include a take on Jimi Hendrix’s “May This

151

152

Women Icons of Popular Music

Be Love” and her takes on songs by Steve Earle (“Goodbye”) and Bob Dylan (“Every Grain of Sand”). She also makes Lucinda Williams’s “Sweet Old World” even more of a heartbreaker. In Harris’s hands these works are re-envisioned, reworked, and turned into singular and haunting songs; the melodies remain intact, uncluttered for the most part, with a subtle, spellbinding effect. The songs on Wrecking Ball are spare, raw portraits that are unﬂinching in their honesty, a balance of the earthy and the spiritual. Wrecking Ball could be the album Harris had been trying to make her entire recording career. It was a risky piece of work. Such compliments are not uncommon—many critics are given to superlatives when it comes to Harris’s voice. Although Wrecking Ball was not a tremendous seller for Asylum, the label that released it—the album peaked at number ninety-four on the Billboard 200—she received a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. Wrecking Ball is important, also, because it marks the beginning of a territory Harris would begin to chart for the next ten years on her own solo works, many of which are marked by similarly haunting, atmospheric production coupled with her own equally haunting, piercing voice, palpable especially on 1999’s Red Dirt Girl and 2003’s Stumble Into Grace. After Wrecking Ball, which also caught the attention of a new, younger generation of listeners, Harris participated in several collaborative works before releasing her next solo studio album. A reprise of her work with Parton and Ronstadt took place for Trio II in 1998, along with collaboration with Ronstadt on Western Wall: The Tucson Sessions, released in 1999. Both were received relatively well by critics and fared well on the country charts, hitting number six, and Internet charts, hitting number seven; it peaked at seventy-three on the Billboard 200. Warner Brothers released a three-disc retrospective compendium called Portraits in 1996, and two years later she worked on a record with Willie Nelson called Teatro. Additionally, a live album called Spyboy was released. The title refers to her band’s name, but it directly references the jester who’s charged with running ahead of the Mardi Gras parade. The rhythm section of her band on Spyboy comes from New Orleans, and All Music Guide described the project as awe-inspiring for its range of material and the live renderings, especially her takes on the Parsons track “Wheels,” and the Parsons-inspired “Boulder to Birmingham.” After 1998’s Spyboy, Harris took some time off to write the material for her next solo record and left her management and her label. Red Dirt Girl, released in fall 2000 on Nonesuch, is the ﬁrst record to feature songs written almost entirely by Harris herself, although The Ballad of Sally Rose featured a majority of her own work. But Red Dirt Girl’s beauty and depth signaled yet another facet of her talent had been uncovered. After working for decades alongside skilled songwriters, it seemed like a natural progression to delve more deeply into songwriting herself. For an artist who took about two decades to put together an album of work that she herself had written, she certainly made a formidable impression, leaving many critics to wonder why

Emmylou Harris

she had waited so long to make such a compelling artistic statement. Her attempts were validated by both the music-buying public and the larger music business, for the record received a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album, peaked at number ﬁve on the country album chart, three on Top Internet Albums, and ﬁfty-four on the Billboard 200. Red Dirt Girl featured some appearances from Guy Clark, Buddy and Julie Miller, Bruce Springsteen, Patty Scialfa, and Jill Cunniff in various forms—either as co-writers, backing musicians, backing vocalists, or some combination thereof. One of its few covers is her tense, understated take on Patty Grifﬁn’s “One Big Love.” Harris charts diverse emotional territory, from sadness and melancholy on “Bang the Drum Slowly,” an elegy for her father; the smart, resistant, “I Don’t Wanna Talk About It Now”; or the autobiographical and reﬂective title track. Rolling Stone described Harris on Red Dirt Girl: “Her ethereal voice, with its silken core and ragged edges, is the perfect delivery system for the tastefully chosen songs she has purveyed for three decades” and called the album “stiﬂingly exquisite” (Berger 2000). Each song is a set piece and tells its own story. After Red Dirt Girl, Harris seemed dedicated to following her songwriting muse, and took part in the Grammy-winning soundtrack to the ﬁlm O Brother Where Art Thou (see sidebar), which also spawned a tour called Down From the Mountain; she also appears in the documentary ﬁlm about the concert. Lanois’s protégé and producer Malcom Burn, who helped mix and who played several instruments on Wrecking Ball, takes pains to preserve the same kind of spacious, spare sonic territory developed on that record with her 2003 album Stumble Into Grace. The material here is beautifully treated; mature, wise, and insightful, it features a number of outstanding contributions from like-minded artists such as Gillian Welch, Jane Siberry, and Linda Ronstadt. The lilting and sweet “Little Bird” is the result of collaboration with Canadian folksingers Kate and Anna McGarrigle. Harris co-wrote, along with Jill Cunniff of Luscious Jackson, the song “Time in Babylon,” whose rhythms and lyrics snake their way into your head and make you think. The song is a poetic indictment of consumerist, apathetic American life, likening it to Babylon, but ultimately, the narrator seeks redemption. Finally, thanks to an intact thirty-year friendship, Harris pairs up again with Ronstadt on an ode to one of country music’s female icons, June Carter Cash, on “Strong Hand (Just One Miracle).” Harris pays tribute to her marriage to Johnny Cash, marveling, “And it’s a miracle/How one soul ﬁnds another.” Harris wrote or cowrote all but one of the album’s eleven tracks. The record is another strong effort from Harris in this vein. “I’m a little surprised I’ve been able to do two albums that way. I’m a card-carrying interpreter. It gives me a great deal of satisfaction, and I hope I’ll be able to live in both worlds” (Devenish 2006). Throughout, the material and even the title, Stumble Into Grace, reﬂect an artist who is starting to really master her craft as a songwriter and one who is trying to get through her life, acknowledging its foibles, ﬂaws, and missteps,

153

154

Women Icons of Popular Music

O Brother, It’s Bluegrass: A Soundtrack Spawns Record Sales Throughout her career, Emmylou Harris has been sought out for her cool, steely voice by other musicians, often for collaborations across genres. However, bluegrass and roots music in general received a tremendous boost after the release of the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? in 2000, directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, and its subsequent soundtrack. The film is an interpretation of Homer’s Odyssey set in Depression-era Mississippi. Put together by respected producer and musician T Bone Burnett, the music exposed country, bluegrass, gospel, folk, and blues to a whole new generation of listeners and had a ripple effect on the record sales of those artists involved. The film featured many bluegrass legends such as Ralph Stanley, Fairfield Four, and the Whites, and younger artists such as Gillian Welch and Alison Krauss, who along with Emmylou Harris sang a chilling a capella “Didn’t Need Nobody But the Baby.” In addition to the Grammy Awards the O Brother soundtrack garnered, including the coveted Album of the Year, it boosted the career profile of Alison Krauss and Union Station, whose aptly titled 2001 release New Favorite was not only a critic’s darling but a number one bluegrass album and number three country record and earned three Grammy Awards. Harris’s fall 2000 release Red Dirt Girl marked a significant upturn for her, earning a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album, and it became her first record in the Top 10 since 1986’s Thirteen. The positive acclaim helped pave the way for the 2003 Stumble Into Grace, which received accolades from the critics and peaked at number six on the country chart and a respectable fifty-eight on both the Billboard 200 and Top Internet Albums chart.

but still seeking peace and deeper meaning. Many critics could not help but remark on her vibrato; Farber said it had never sounded quite as regal. The title, too, is a bit ironic, considering how poised, groomed, and positively radiant the silver-haired Harris looks on the cover. The album reached number six on the country chart and peaked at ﬁfty-eight on both the Billboard 200 and Top Internet Albums, an accomplishment for a record that is tough to classify and that comes from a woman who was approaching sixty. She received a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Folk Album. Proving again her ability to choose (and be sought out by) compelling collaborators, and also to enrich many songs by adding her silken voice, the 2006 album with Mark Knopﬂer, All the Roadrunning, was an intriguing pairing. With his subdued, understated raspy drawl and her light but rich voice, the rootsy songs, mostly ballads and mid-tempo tunes that chronicle love and loss, suggest a lifetime of history, especially the touching, tense “This is Us.” Over the course of several years, the songs were slowly put together— most of them duets and most of them written by Knopﬂer—with a richness

Emmylou Harris

and natural intimacy that prompted Farber to declare that their work together called to mind the duets between Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash or Tammy Wynette and George Jones. Arguably, Knopﬂer, who had been the lead singer and guitarist for the band Dire Straits in the 1980s and released a few solo albums, beneﬁted from working with Harris. Farber wrote that Knopﬂer needed something to “liven up his increasingly drowsy guitar playing and somnambulant singing” (Farber 2006). Critics were somewhat surprised by the collaboration, but as Harris told it, when she and Knopﬂer sat down and started to get to know one another, they shared a folk background that was “very song-oriented. We like a lot of the same artists, we were both fans of each other, and our voices blended together very easily from the beginning” (Sunday Herald 2006). In fall 2007, Rhino Records released an extremely comprehensive, seventyeight-track four-CD package, and one DVD called Songbird: Rare Tracks and Forgotten Gems, which is a collection of rare tracks, previously unreleased songs, and noteworthy collaborations. The albums work in chronological order, offering selections from over the years on the ﬁrst two discs. It shows off unissued outtakes such as “Softly and Tenderly” from the Trio II sessions; the song “In the Garden,” which was recorded for the ﬁlm All the Pretty Horses (it didn’t make the cut); and three songs from the Gram Parsons tribute album she produced, Return of the Grievous Angel. Appearing for the ﬁrst time is her favorite song of Parsons, “Angels Rejoiced.” (Her last conversation with him was about that song.) Duets with Patty Grifﬁn, Mark Knopﬂer, George Jones, and other artists are also included. The accompanying DVD includes nine videos and a duet of “Love Hurts” with yet another vocally unlikely collaborator, Elvis Costello. The song was recorded at the Grand Ole Opry in 2006.

MISSION, MOTIVATION, PROCESS Much of Harris’s process, like that of any musician, comes from what she learns from others and what she allows herself to be open to discover. Much has been made, for example, of the inﬂuence of Gram Parsons on the direction of the early part of her career and of the collaborative nature of her work in general. But the work with Parsons was different from later work; it was the beginning of her career, and there was much to learn. “In singing with him I felt that he really honed my voice and my style, which until that point had basically consisted of me trying to copy Joan Baez and Judy Collins.” She says that she learned a country style of “restrained approach and very, very delicate phrasing, which really does enable you to bring a lot of emotion to a song, without actually emoting as such,” she said (Sunday Herald 2006). When she was putting together her breakthrough album Pieces of the Sky, Parsons had passed away unexpectedly. But Harris continued her educational

155

156

Women Icons of Popular Music

process, listening to Merle Haggard, George Jones, and Tammy Wynette. She would jot down ideas and songs and lyrics in her notebook. As Pieces of the Sky producer, Ahern appreciated Harris’s depth and that she was “more interested in important compositions.” That led him to the material of songwriter Rodney Crowell, whose song “Bluebird Wine” leads off the album. Her voice startles for its clarity and its upper-register ﬂuidity; in contrast to her later years, Harris’s voice is almost girlish on this album, resembling Dolly Parton’s. In fact, Harris even covers Parton’s signature autobiographical tune “Coat of Many Colors.” While assembling the musicians, they chose many who were not country musicians per se but excellent players nonetheless; some had even worked with Parsons. Harris and Ahern stressed to them that they were looking to do something innovative, so the musicians should not worry about what category the songs would ultimately ﬁt into. “We were trying to reinvent the music we loved, because what’s the point of doing something exactly the way it was done earlier? If you are a song interpreter, you must come up with something different” (Clark 1975). And that is exactly what they did. They rented a large house in Beverly Hills, and Ahern transported his mobile studio from Toronto on a ﬂatbed tractor trailer. Once they got started, it was Ahern’s mission to record more than was essential for one album, so that there would be no pressure to include subpar material and also plenty to choose from for future projects. Harris’s contributions were rich and seemingly unending. That curiosity is a testament to her continued success and why many artists continually cite her integrity. One of the album’s standout tracks happens to be one that Harris wrote with some assistance from Bill Danoff. “Boulder to Birmingham” was inspired by the notorious Topanga Canyon ﬁres that were raging at the time, consuming the landscape and offering their own palette of color and smoke, but also by the death of Parsons. “When you are very raw and in the throes of deep grief, there’s an unreality of being in the world when someone that used to be with you is suddenly no longer there. I think the combination of those things is what got the song started,” Harris said (Clark 1975). Some of the lyrics relate that landscape, and other parts talk about what the narrator would do “[i]f I thought I could see/I could see your face.” Another verse is chilling and seems directed to Parsons’s death. Harris sings, “Well you really got me this time/And the hardest part is knowing I’ll survive.” Harris continued to write songs as she got older, and her work in the past ten years consists more of her own material than covers of other artists. For most of her adult life she has worked as a musician, other than short stints waiting tables in the early days. Life certainly informs her songwriting. In 2006, she told a writer for the Daily Post, a Liverpool, U.K., publication, “Everything that happens to you affects you in some way, it’s there in the memory and becomes part of everything. But I don’t really write songs about characters, although I suppose there was Lillian [from her song “Red Dirt

Emmylou Harris

157

Girl”], but that was a composite of people I knew. For the most part, I usually just write about myself” I look at my voice and my (Key 2006). As for her guitar chops, Harris claimed abilities as a gift. I don’t feel in this same interview that she only knows four or that I can even take any credit ﬁve chords, but the veracity of this statement feels for it, but it’s such a huge suspect, especially considering how quickly other presence in my life. musicians attest to her unsung skills on the guitar. In the studio, Harris is content to let the experts do the producing and mixing, but she is more inclined to keep things organic. “I do prefer to record live with everyone in the room, but it’s often nice to just put something down with a beat box or bass or something” (Key 2006). Throughout the process, though, she remains an unparalleled collaborator, suggesting perhaps that something has guided her and protected her. “I do believe like souls attract like souls. I was fortunate in that I had this creative safety net, people who trusted my instincts and supported me,” Harris said, looking back on her career (Gleason 2007). She feels similarly about the instant kinship she must feel with a song before she will sing it. “I think they ﬁnd you, somehow. It’s been a very serendipitous thing. . . . I don’t waste my time with songs that don’t absolutely ﬂoor me. . . . I think you have to create a magnetic ﬁeld, in a sense, that draws the songs that shimmer for you. But I’m always looking” (Brown 2004, 11).

LEGACY AND OTHER INTERESTS One of the causes that Harris has championed through her career deals with Vietnam veterans’ affairs. In 1997, Harris visited Cambodia and Vietnam with Bobby Muller, the president of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation; he is also the cofounder of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. The visit inspired her to do something to affect change, and she has fought for landmine eradication. Along with like-minded artists such as Steve Earle, John Prine, and Nanci Grifﬁth, Harris participated in a beneﬁt album called Concerts for a Landmine Free World, which was released in spring 2001. The album comprises live performances from these artists and others, including Kris Kristofferson and Mary Chapin Carpenter. The concerts took place in December 1999 and were initiated by Harris, who contributes the album’s ﬁrst track, “The Pearl.” Her work was nationally recognized by the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation when, on behalf of the organization, Senator Patrick J. Leahy presented Harris with a humanitarian award named after him on behalf of landmine victims. At the ceremony, Harris was honored by her artist friends, many of whom had appeared at these beneﬁt concerts, and she performed as well. Harris expressed her gratitude for a career that enabled her to illuminate causes and issues that concern her. “I’m so, so grateful for the opportunity to be able to do that. Because that’s the

158

Women Icons of Popular Music

only way I know to be really thankful for my blessings” (Margolis 2002). In 2004, she served as the narrator for a U.S. Department of State–supported documentary calling attention to the issue called First Steps: The International Response to the Global Landmine Crisis, which was aired on PBS. An animal lover who owns numerous cats and dogs, Harris is also an advocate for animal rescue efforts and fundraising, including support for PETA programs. Since 2002, Harris has run a dog rescue and adoption organization called Bonaparte’s Retreat, which is based in her home community of Nashville, —Timothy White, editor of where she has lived for more than twenty years. She Billboard magazine started the shelter in her backyard in memory of her own poodle-mix dog, who spent much time with her touring on the road and lived to the age of ﬁfteen. After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in fall 2005, many animals, too, were displaced. Harris made a donation to and worked with the Humane Society of the United States for relief efforts in that area, which helped about 10,000 animals. Harris adopted a Katrina dog, Keeta, who travels with her. “Animals can teach us how to be better human beings. They certainly taught me that” (Humane Society of the United States ofﬁcial Web site). Harris organized a beneﬁt concert for the Nashville Humane Association, which was held in the city’s Ryman Auditorium and has performed at other events for Tony La Russa’s Animal Rescue Foundation. Harris gives to her community in other ways as well. In 2002, she organized a beneﬁt concert to help with repairs of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, a Gothic revival structure in Nashville that also happens to be the church her mother attends. She has also donated time and energy to Nashville’s Second Harvest Food Bank. Since 2002, budding guitarists who idolize Harris have been able to purchase a Gibson that the company named in her honor. The L-200 Emmylou Harris Model is styled after the SJ-200 she had been playing for most of her career and is a smaller instrument that travels easily. Her impact on other female artists is seemingly inﬁnite. Harris, in short, is a genre unto herself, and her ability to seamlessly blend and embody many genres in one career and one voice is a model for other artists who have been inspired by her. Artists from Sheryl Crow to Lucinda Williams borrow her twang, her sorrow, and her ability to fuse country and rock. Bluegrass purists with beautiful voices such as Gillian Welch and Alison Krauss beneﬁt from Harris’s trailblazing ways, too. And younger, independent-minded artists with country twang but more rock/pop-oriented tendencies such as Garrison Starr, Kasey Chambers, Alison Moorer, Neko Case, and Jolie Holland owe much to her style, too. She is credited, alongside artists such as Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams, as embodying a genre loosely called Americana, whose lineage can

As both a truly venturesome, genre-transcending visionary and a provocative guardian of country music’s living heritage, Emmylou Harris has uncompromisingly advanced the cause of roots music in our nation and its artistic and cultural resonance around the world.

Emmylou Harris

be traced back to Johnny Cash, a legendary talent who combined elements of rock, folk, and country, and even to Parsons himself, who called his sound “cosmic American music.” Rodney Crowell is absolute in his declaration of her inﬂuence, saying that “every woman artist now in this business has in some way been inﬂuenced by Emmylou and her dignity of spirit” (Brown 2004, 10).

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Pieces of the Sky. Reprise, 1975 Elite Hotel. Reprise, 1976 Luxury Liner. Reprise, 1977 Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town. Reprise, 1978 Blue Kentucky Girl. Reprise, 1979 Roses in the Snow. Reprise, 1980 The Ballad of Sally Rose. Reprise, 1985 At the Ryman. Reprise, 1992 Wrecking Ball. Elektra, 1995 Spyboy. Eminent, 1998 Red Dirt Girl. Elektra, 2000 Stumble Into Grace. Nonesuch, 2003. The Very Best of Emmylou Harris: Heartaches and Highways. Rhino, 2005 Songbird: Rare Tracks and Forgotten Gems. Rhino, 2007

FURTHER READING Ankeny, Jason. “Review of Gliding Bird.” All Music Guide. Available online at www .allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:kjfrxqq5ldae. Berger, Arion. “Review of Red Dirt Girl.” Rolling Stone 850 (September 28, 2000). www.rollingstone.com/artists/emmylouharris/albums/album/119307/review/ 5947007/red_dirt_girl. Brown, Jim. Emmylou Harris: Angel in Disguise. Kingston, Ontario: Fox Music Books, 2004. Clark, Rick. Pieces of the Sky liner notes. Nashville: Warner Brothers, 1975. Coleman, Mark, and Mark Kemp. The New Rolling Stone Album Guide. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004. Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/ emmylouharris/biography. Devenish, Colin. “Emmylou Finds ‘Grace’: New Album Honors Carter, Cash, Features Old Friends.” Rolling Stone online (September 16, 2003). Available at www .rollingstone.com/artists/emmylouharris/articles/story5935869/emmylou_ﬁnds_ grace. Farber, Jim. “It’s a Three-For-All! It’s a Key Day for Record Releases.” New York Daily News (April 25, 2006). Flippo, Chet. “Emmylou Harris is Century Honoree: Country Artist to Receive Billboard’s Highest Honor.” Billboard (May 8, 1999).

159

160

Women Icons of Popular Music

Gibson Guitars ofﬁcial Web site. “Gibson, Emmylou Harris Introduce L-200 Travel/ Performance Guitar.” Available online at www.gibson.com/whatsnew/pressrelease/ 2002/jan8a.html. Gleason, Holly. “A Soulful Survivor Takes Stock: Emmylou Harris Begins a Year’s Hiatus as She Reﬂects on the People and Places that were Part and Parcel of her New Multidisc Retrospective.” Los Angeles Times (September 16, 2007). Harris, Emmylou. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. See www.emmylouharris.com. Herbst, Peter. “Luxury Liner review.” Rolling Stone 235 (March 24, 1977). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/emmylouharris/albums/album/223808/ review/6067959/luxury_liner Holden, Stephen. “Elite Hotel review.” Rolling Stone 207 (February 26, 1976). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/emmylouharris/albums//album/5165089/ review/6210136/elite_hotel. Humane Society of the United States. “Emmylou Harris: A Beautiful Voice for Change.” 2006. Available online at www.hsus.org/humane_living/memorial_and_ planned_gifts/hsus-special-friends/emmylou_harris_her_lifes.html. Key, Philip. “Country Living: Emmylou Harris Talks to Philip Key about 35 Years in Music.” Liverpool Daily Post (June 2, 2006). Marcus, Greil. “Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town. Review.” Rolling Stone 260 (March 9, 1978). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/emmylouharris/ albums/album/114489/review/6212668/quarter_moon_in_a_ten_cent_town. Margolis, Lynne. “Emmylou Honored in D.C.” Rolling Stone online (November 13, 2002). Available at www.rollingstone.com/artists/emmylouharris/articles/story/ 5935661/emmylou_honored_in_dc. Pendragon, Jana. “Spyboy Review.” All Music Guide. Available online at wc06.allmusic .com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:hvfexqujldae. Scoppa, Bud. “Pieces of the Sky. Review.” Rolling Stone 184 (April 10, 1975). Skanse, Richard. “Restless Angel: It’s Taken A Year for Emmylou Harris to Catch Up to Her Vacation.” Rolling Stone online (December 10, 1998). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/emmylouharris/articles/story/5922324/restless_ angel. The Sunday Herald. “It Takes Two, Baby: A Skilled Solo Artist, Emmylou Harris Has Also Thrived When Working With Others.” Glasgow, Scotland (July 30, 2006).

Courtesy of Photofest

Debbie Harry

162

Women Icons of Popular Music

OVERVIEW

I was hugely influenced by Debbie Harry when I started out as a singer and songwriter. I thought she was the coolest chick in the universe.

As the lead singer of the post-punk band Blondie, Debbie Harry brought a trendsetting fashion sense and an energized yet cool, almost reserved, vocal approach to the group. Blondie was the most commer—Madonna cially viable band of the punk/new wave era that started during the late 1970s and into the early 1980s. The band articulated a smart and witty attitude with its lyrics, and its music was unafraid to dip into other styles and moods—rap, reggae, rock, and disco, to name a few. Despite its inﬂuential New York City punk pedigree, the group had an incredibly melodic sound that avoided pretense yet did not pander to the Top 40 sensibility of the day. Instead, Blondie did its own thing, and the band, along with Harry herself, became extraordinarily popular in the United States and the United Kingdom. As part of Blondie, Harry helped make the sound of punk palatable to the masses. Thirty years later, many songs such as “Rapture” and “The Tide Is High,” often show up on television and ﬁlm and receive mash-up treatment with other artists and remix treatment by deejays and producers. Through her years with Blondie—a name that refers self-consciously to a persona Harry created and to her hair color as well—she and the band experienced an ebb and ﬂow relationship with success. She and band mate/ boyfriend Chris Stein wrote most of the material together, which became increasingly eclectic. At the height of the band’s popularity, she released a solo album. Then, Stein became struck with a rare illness that threatened his life, and musical endeavors went on hiatus for a few years in the early 1980s. Harry began acting in ﬁlms and releasing more albums on her own, to varying levels of critical and commercial acclaim. When Stein regained his strength later in the decade, the band reunited. The resulting tour and album were both tremendously successful and are a testament to the band’s longevity, inﬂuence, and iconic status, in no small part due to Harry’s personality and image as a steely, sexy blonde. Despite the fact that Harry appeared to be “pop’s ultimate blow-up doll, she sniggered underneath, fooling middle America, nay the world, into thinking she was the fantasy, a shiny, modern Marilyn Monroe. Blondie, it seemed, were [sic] the ultimate Warholian mix of art and commerce” (O’Brien 2002, 139). Deborah Harry became an icon in no small part because she purposefully played with the expectations and bleached-blonde images of Hollywood—her natural hair color is brown—by invoking the glamour and then taking control of it in a self-directed form of empowerment that suggests that she would readily objectify herself before she would allow others to do it to her. She intentionally courted attention, but on her own terms; Stein would send risqué pictures of Harry to magazines. As rock critic Evelyn McDonnell said, there are two ways of looking at her: “Deborah Harry brought a pin-up, starlet

Debbie Harry

163

sensibility to rock and roll, or Deborah Harry brought a punk sensibility to the pin-up/starlet. Or both” (Che It’s great to be back in the hot 2005, xv). But Harry has never simply reduced her- seat. It keeps your ass warm. self to a vapid object of desire; she represents a smart and sexy female star who is aware of herself. She plays with the expectations of her audience but also shows her audience that she too is a work in progress, the subject of her own creation. It is a posture that is not without irony, but she also shows audiences she can have a lot of fun, too. Given Blondie’s tremendous success as a group, it was inevitable that when Harry transitioned into a solo career and the band went on hiatus in 1982 she encountered tough criticism. Speaking strictly in terms of commercial sales, Harry was most successful with Blondie; most of her solo releases were not tremendous sellers, but KooKoo did hit gold status. Rolling Stone’s biography of her, written by Arion Berger, even went so far as to say that her “fake-toughgirl act on her solo records proves that Deborah Harry needs her ex-Blondie songwriting partner, Chris Stein, like a ﬁsh needs gills” (Berger 2004). When the band reunited for two albums and a tour in the late 1990s, the records sold well and the tour sold out. The group’s successful reunion, too, proved that their music was still vital, even if the sound and the musical landscape had altered—their reconnection and its attendant album and touring helped expose them to a new generation of fans. Harry brought to Blondie’s reunion another dimension to the band and her role in it. To some extent, Harry’s image overshadowed her own talent and the talent of her bandmates, and that stress took its toll. Years later, when the group reunited, she told rock critic Ann Powers, “What keeps me happy now is focusing on the music. I lost that focus at some point or another; all the attention pushed me away from it”(Powers 1999).

EARLY YEARS Harry was born in Miami in 1945 and was adopted and raised by Richard and Catherine Harry in the suburbs near Paterson, New Jersey. When she was an adult, she tried to ﬁnd out some information about her biological parents, but her father had passed away and her mother did not want to speak with her. Much about her childhood is unknown, but biographer Cathay Che explains that for the most part it was happy. Harry had a sister named Martha, enjoyed singing, and seemed well adjusted, albeit somewhat shy and a bit introspective. In other words there was little about her upbringing that would foreshadow the kind of noncomformist streak that would later develop once she started taking music seriously. She and her mother did disagree about Harry’s fashion sense; she wanted to put her sneakers on backwards and wear things that were more outrageous than the preppy look her mother envisioned

164

Women Icons of Popular Music

for her. Although Harry hated going to school and did not like the pressure to perform, she was always curious and interested in her work. Her relationship with music started with the radio, which she listened to all the time. She also sang in the church choir but did not have any vocal training while growing up. Harry was inﬂuenced by the diversity of music on the radio more than speciﬁc records or artists, as she never had much money to buy albums. That love of radio and the impact it made no doubt must have inﬂuenced the way the band created its own music; Harry never lost sense of what made a great song. In 1965, Harry moved to New York City as soon as she graduated from college with the aspiration to become a painter. Her ﬁrst foray into music in the late 1960s came as the singer with Wind in the Willows, a folk-based rock group formed in 1966 by former civil rights activist Paul Klein. Writer Robert Christgau, then working at The Village Voice, chronicled the story of the band, which helped catch the attention of manager Peter Leeds. The group recorded one self-titled album. Released by Capitol in 1968, it did not have much of an impact on listeners so a second one was never released. The group broke up in 1969, but the band’s tongue-in-cheek, somewhat campy sensibility later surfaced in her work despite the lack of commercial or critical traction. After the Willows broke up, Harry went through a rough period. Within about a year, she moved out of New York City, ﬁrst to upstate New York, and then back to her parents’ house in New Jersey where she kicked a drug habit she had developed. Harry worked a number of jobs while she explored her options. She also entered beauty school—a move that made sense in light of the evolution of her image once she started experimenting in rock bands. During her transitional years, before Blondie was formed, Harry worked as a Playboy bunny brieﬂy at the Playboy Club, and worked as a waitress at the New York restaurant Max’s Kansas City. That job put her in a prime spot—the punk rock scene of the 1970s. During the early 1970s glam-punk was emerging as something of a backlash to the hippie folk music sensibility that had started to dominate the 1960s. Harry became part of a downtown New York City scene that played at the legendary punk rock club CBGB’s, now closed, and included artists such as Patti Smith (who was working hard to create an image of poetic androgyny), Lou Reed, David Byrne, along with groups such as the Ramones and Television. Harry had incredible, crippling stage fright, but she eventually moved past it when Blondie was in its formative stages of performing at CBGB. She forced herself to confront it with the logic that you don’t know whether or not you can do something unless you try. In 1973, she was playing in an all-female rock group called the Stilletos when she met Chris Stein, an artist who had graduated from the School of Visual Arts and whose connection to her soon became both artistic and romantic. She left the Stilettos and formed Angel and the Snake with Stein. By 1974 they had changed the group’s name to Blondie and added Clem Burke on drums, Gary Valentine on bass, and Jimmy Destri on keyboards. The band’s name did not stem from Harry’s

Debbie Harry

165

hair color per se, but rather from the term “Blondie” used by lascivious catcalling truck drivers who called I made my own image, then I was trapped in it. out to her on the street. —in 1993, about “Blondie” Stein had the smart idea to photograph Harry for the underground magazine Punk, which was featuring the likes of Johnny Rotten, Patti Smith, and other punk artists who vied for its attention. In a centerfold, she appeared naked with a guitar and was referred to as “punkmate” of the month. The photograph was both cheeky and insider-ish—a self-conscious allusion to Harry’s previous short stint as a Playboy bunny. Her appearances in the magazine caught the attention of people before the group had taken off; in fact, the photographs may have helped Blondie nab a recording contract. The group was getting other press in the New York scene, which also helped, even though many other emerging bands discounted them because the band’s sound, enthusiasm, and lack of chops, seemed to relegate them to the pop category rather than any kind of artful participant in the punk scene. In the world of punk rock, ambition and enthusiasm were not revered attributes. The group’s ﬁrst single, “X Offender,” was produced independently by Richard Gottehrer and Marty Thau. Gottehrer was known for his work on a CBGB compilation and more signiﬁcantly with the 1960s group the Crystals on their song “My Boyfriend’s Back,” and Thau had worked with the Ramones. Gottehrer and Thau sold Blondie’s single to the label Private Stock. The song’s topic was risqué—a sex offender—but the sound was enticing and melodic, complete with female backup vocals reminiscent of the 1960s. Despite the fact that the single didn’t really connect with audiences even though it got radio airtime, Gottehrer persuaded the label to release the group’s self-titled debut, Blondie, in December 1976. After cementing a cult following in New York, Blondie played in Los Angeles to sell-out crowds. There was not much of a scene in LA but the radio station KROQ had started to create a slow buzz about the group by playing its single. The group played a week with the Ramones and opened for Iggy Pop on his national tour in winter 1977, followed by their own United Kingdom concert debut. The group had signed on with Private Stock without the beneﬁt of a manager or legal representation. Private Stock told Blondie that the deal was decent and that they should simply sign the contract. Because they couldn’t afford a lawyer or manager, they did. Luckily, that situation changed in 1977 when Peter Leeds signed on. He worked with the group for two years and wrested control of the band’s deal with Private Stock from the company. In October 1977, Chrysalis Records bought out the group’s contract and rereleased their debut. By this point the band was in the hole at least a half a million dollars for production costs and tour expenses typically associated with such an arrangement and faced hard work and extensive touring to pay off the debt. Leeds was motivated to take the band to the next level of success and viewed Harry as the key to their image.

166

Women Icons of Popular Music

Writing in Rolling Stone, critic Ken Tucker described the debut album as “a playful exploration of Sixties pop interlarded with trendy nihilism. Everything is sung by Deborah Harry, a possessor of a bombshell zombie’s voice that can sound dreamily seductive and woodenly Masonite within the same song” (Tucker 1977). Tucker’s description captured Harry’s appeal: Some of the album’s content suggests a sci-ﬁ or tabloidesque unbelievability, such as “Kung Fu Girls,” “The Attack of the Giant Ants,” and “Rip Her to Shreds,” all of which are rendered in an oddly playful and energetic manner. Overall, the songs are irreverent and sexy, a balance of aggression and retreat, teasing and truth-telling. Unsurprisingly, such a left-of-center, unorthodox approach—a punk-leaning rock band with a sense of humor and a sense of darkness—did not nab them much airplay. Their aggressive pop, driven by an equally aggressive female singer, was unusual and new. Consequently, Blondie was subjected to an unofﬁcial radio boycott. Harry’s intentional move to take control over image creation rather than leave it to her label, a man in power, or the media had its costs. Some listeners were confused and thought Harry’s name was Blondie. Some missed the irony altogether. One promotional poster for the song “Rip Her to Shreds” played off the playful-yet-aggressive sex kitten image that Harry had cultured for herself, asking “Wouldn’t You Like To Rip Her To Shreds?” Such reductive behavior in the marketplace took the attention away from the music and placed it strictly on superﬁcial appearance. Still, Harry was purposeful. “I wanted to inject ﬁlm-star glamour. And I didn’t want to be portrayed as a victim” (O’Brien 2002, 141). Before the release of the second album, Gary Valentine left the band. Chrysalis released Blondie’s follow-up, Plastic Letters, in early 1978, which was also produced by Richard Gottehrer. It, too, contained a number of songs whose titles suggested supermarket tabloid headlines, such as “Youth Nabbed as Sniper,” “Bermuda Triangle Blues,” and others. A review in Rolling Stone faulted the release by saying its trashiness was “too studied” and its mania “too highpitched.” Some music critics point to the album as a typical sophomore slump with uneven material, yet the release yielded the group’s ﬁrst charting hits. Their initial success came in the United Kingdom with the upbeat “Denis,” a remake of Randy and the Rainbows 1963 hit “Denise.” Blondie changed the gender, and Harry sings a verse in French. The song broke through on the UK chart, hitting number two in early 1978. It hit the Top 10 and propelled the album to the same spot. “Denis” was followed by “(I’m Always Touched By Your) Presence, Dear,” which went into the Top 10 in the United Kingdom. Stateside, the record entered the Billboard 100, topping out at seventy-two on the pop albums chart.

CAREER PATH It was Parallel Lines, the group’s third album released in September 1978, that exposed their music to a much larger audience and, most importantly, in

Debbie Harry

their home country. Producer/songwriter Mike Chapman took the helm, and the band emerged less as a raw variation on punk and new wave than as a bona ﬁde pop band. For instance, “Picture This,” written by Stein, Harry, and Destri, hit the Top 40 and “Hanging on the Telephone” hit the Top 10—both on the UK charts. In the United States, “Hanging on the Telephone” was closer to straightforward smart pop than the usual snarky punk/new wave hybrid that attracted only the most underground of music listeners. Like the best of Blondie’s hits on the album, it was a terse blast of well-produced pop music confection, clocking in around three minutes. Listeners could see past the ironic, sometimes silly B-movie imagery of its ﬁrst couple of releases and embrace the band for its melodic pop music. The record’s success is most attributed to the smash “Heart of Glass,” written by Harry and Stein, which became easily one of the band’s most recognizable songs. With a subtle but unmistakable disco beat, the song is infectious, memorable, and danceable—qualities that helped it be the ﬁrst Blondie song to make the number one slot in the United Kingdom and the United States. “Heart of Glass” was a respectable dance hit, and “Sunday Girl” hit number one in the United Kingdom. “One Way or Another,” in which Harry adopts the persona of a snarling, sneaky stalker, determined to nab a love interest, starts off with the statement that the singer is going to ﬁnd the listener and then “getcha getcha getcha getcha.” “One Way or Another,” with its signature guitar lick, was a Top 40 hit, going to the twenty-four spot. Harry wrote the song with bassist Nigel Harrison and released it as a single on the heels of “Heart of Glass.” The record ultimately sold 20 million copies worldwide and peaked on the pop albums chart at number six. Even though the singles were blockbuster hits, the other, lesser-played tracks were equally strong, from the slightly dreamy “Fade Away and Radiate,” to “Sunday Girl,” an up-tempo love song with handclaps, to the imploring “Will Anything Happen?” The latter is narrated from the perspective of a backstage groupie, starstruck and hoping to get lucky. The song’s questions “Will anything happen? Will I see you again?” evade easy answers: Is she talking about the rock star’s impending fame or her smoldering passion for him? “Hanging on the Telephone” and “Will Anything Happen?” are noteworthy, too, because they were written by Jack Lee, who was not a member of the band. The band’s platinum-selling fourth album Eat to the Beat followed in 1979 and was also produced by Mike Chapman. The album is unapologetically pop driven, but remains engaging because of the band’s adept musicianship and Harry’s strong vocalization. She distinguishes herself among other female rock vocalists of the time because she actually sings rather than emote any tough but hurting, bluesy female personas that were popular then. “Dreaming,” “Union City Blue,” and “Atomic” were all sizable hits in the United States and the United Kingdom, and “Atomic,” which manages to meld disco beats and surf rock riffs, hit number one in England. “Dreaming” especially uses electronic overdubbing and multitracking, which creates an echoing wash of

167

168

Women Icons of Popular Music

Harry’s voice in pleasant conjunction with Clem Burke’s fast-paced drumming that rises and breaks, almost like waves, as the simple guitar riff of the song’s main melody ﬂoats above it. Even though Eat to the Beat peaked at seventeen on the pop albums chart, William Ruhlmann of All Music Guide called it a “secondhand version of their breakthrough third album.” Even if some critics thought the album was half-successful creatively speaking—Ruhlmann even went so far as to call it “corporate rock without the tangy ﬂavor that had made Parallel Lines such ear candy”—Eat to the Beat was still a huge commercial success and feels more muscular, layered, and polished. The song “Victor,” for example, predates the kind of dark sonic noise of Frank Black and the Pixies’ underground, abstract punk-rock songs that would earn headlines in the late 1980s. But themes of Blondie’s earlier records are also present in Eat to the Beat, though they take on different meanings in light of the group’s fame. The cheeky “Die Young Stay Pretty” with its electronic-reggae lilt foreshadows a later hit (“The Tide is High”). It can be read as an indictment of the culture that ultimately enabled the group’s fame and as a tongue-in-cheek comment on the way in which Harry willfully put herself up for scrutiny, albeit on her own terms. The year 1979 was also signiﬁcant because Leeds departed as the group’s manager. In the Harry and Stein biography Making Tracks: The Rise of Blondie, they assert that Leeds often did not consult them before making decisions. For his part, Leeds does not dispute that but contends that he wanted something more for them than just playing at CBGB’s and other small dives in New York (Che 2005, 46). Indisputable, however, is the fact that the group rose to stardom while he was their manager. In the meantime, Harry collaborated with European disco producer Giorgio Moroder on the song that became one of the group’s enormous hits, “Call Me,” which was the theme to the coming-of-age 1980 ﬁlm American Gigolo. The song, released in February of that same year, became the group’s second U.S. chart hit and another number one pop smash. Later in the year, Blondie released Autoamerican. From the very ﬁrst track, “Europa,” it is clear that Blondie was looking for a different musical direction. It’s a sonic experiment that starts off with ﬁlm-score-worthy orchestration and gradually adds a moody guitar before devolving into a mess of distortion, electronic bleeps, and Harry performing some spoken-word piece about the ways in which the automobile has negatively impacted contemporary life. From that ﬁrst track, which borders on artful noise, Blondie moves into the disco-pop of “Live It Up” and the loose cabaret throwback “Here’s Looking at You.” All this selfconsciousness and willful genre-hopping would almost be too much to bear, until we get to “The Tide is High,” followed by “Angels on the Balcony,” and realize that the Blondie we know is alive and well. Autoamerican’s sales were boosted not only by the group’s strong fan base but also by the fact that Blondie kept a steady recording pace by releasing ﬁve albums in as many years. Its two gigantic hits—a sunny cover of the reggae

Debbie Harry

tune “The Tide is High,” which went to number one in the United Kingdom and the United States, and “Rapture” helped the album go platinum. “Rapture,” a slinky tune with a cool, bass-heavy groove, marked another innovation when Harry experimented vocally, employing a technique that is a cross between spoken word and rap. This song marks an early pop embrace of rap, the burgeoning New York musical style. However, the record overall shows experiments in form, sound, and style that are not always consistent. By this point, many fans had declared that the group sold out, but the point is that Blondie had started off by consciously playing on preexisting genres and ideas. Somehow, the band lives comfortably in the contradictions that its fame and high proﬁle have presented: Blondie is a band with its roots in an avant garde scene in New York that writes commercially palatable and memorable pop songs. Autoamerican peaked at number seven on the pop albums chart. However, change was afoot, and fans and critics knew it, though details of Harry’s ﬁrst solo album were closely guarded before its debut. KooKoo was released in 1981 while Blondie was still technically together even though some of its members already were engaged in other musical endeavors. Harry told the New York Times that she and Stein, still her boyfriend and songwriting partner, wanted to “wait and see what everybody falls into,” before releasing the album and admitted her interest in Broadway and ﬁlm (Palmer 1981). Production help came from R&B gurus Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, who had worked with Diana Ross and Chic. Some critics thought that because of the high caliber of players, the record’s offerings should have been much better than they were, but other critics saw that Harry was trying to synthesize the styles Blondie had been playing with on its previous release. Some critics thought KooKoo was a successful exercise; the long-time connection between Harry and Stein is heard throughout. The funky “Backﬁred” is reminiscent of “Rapture,” with its dominant bass and horn section and speak-sing vocals. As the album’s single, it surfaced on the dance, R&B, and pop charts, faring best on club play. Harry had a part in writing four of the album’s eleven songs, “Jump Jump,” “Inner City Spillover,” “Chrome,” and “Military Rap.” Regardless of any perceived critical shortcomings or songwriting failures, the record hit number twenty-ﬁve on the pop albums chart and ultimately went gold. In fall 1981, the group released The Best of Blondie, which was another success, achieving the number thirty spot on the pop albums chart. In spring 1982, the group released The Hunter, which was created to satisfy its contract with Chrysalis. The album was a ﬂop in comparison to the band’s earlier work. “Island of Lost Souls,” something of a rehash of “The Tide is High,” peaked at thirty-seven, barely making it into the Billboard pop singles chart, and was the only single from the album in the United States. Some critics believed the material was inferior and that the lyrics were disjointed and difﬁcult to understand. With The Hunter, it seemed as though the band was running out of ideas. Even the arena tour it launched that summer was a disappointment: the

169

170

Women Icons of Popular Music

New York Times urged the group to basically regroup. The record went to thirty-three on the pop albums chart. Interpersonally, Blondie was suffering, too. Prior to the release of The Hunter, Infante sued the group, whom he felt was trying to purposely cut him out by excluding him from rehearsals, meetings, and recording sessions. The suit was settled out of court, and Infante remained in the group. Solo Work, Acting, and Other Endeavors Blondie got some time off, but not necessarily for artistic reasons. Stein was suffering from the rare genetic disease called pemphigus, and Harry took time off to take care of him. His illness, from which he ultimately recovered, changed their lives, however. Harry would not release another solo record for nearly ﬁve years. They were both exhausted by the illness, and their romance did not make it. “I didn’t know who I was anymore. I was really lost and very, very depressed. Chris was trying to recover, and I was trying to recover. There just wasn’t room for two recoveries,” Harry told People magazine (Helligar 1999). Periodically she appeared on record and in ﬁlms, but many things happened in the landscape of pop music in the interim that also affected her solo career. Wisely, even before Blondie ofﬁcially went on hiatus, Harry started to turn toward other endeavors, a move that in hindsight looks as though she were laying the groundwork for other career possibilities. For the next ten years or so, her career took shape in the form of solo albums, acting stints, and even a foray with a jazz group. In 1980 she starred in a small role in the independent, pseudo–ﬁlm noir Union City, reminiscent of the 1944 genre standard-bearer Double Indemnity. Chris Stein contributed music and Harry starred as Lillian, the wife of a man who is headed for a breakdown. She garnered favorable reviews for her performance, which enabled her to take the time to choose among acting offers. She started using her full name, Deborah Harry, rather than her nickname Debbie, for her acting work. Harry had auditioned for a part that actress Cathy Moriarty ultimately got in the Martin Scorcese ﬁlm Raging Bull. In 1982, she appeared in a starring role as a radio talk show host in a ﬁlm by David Cronenberg called Videodrome, followed by a role in the off-Broadway play Teaneck Tanzi: The Venus Flytrap in 1983. She took a memorable role as Velma Von Tussle in John Waters’s campy 1988 ﬁlm Hairspray and a bit part in the 1989 series of short ﬁlms New York Stories, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Woody Allen, and Martin Scorcese. She also appeared in three episodes of the crime drama show Wiseguy in 1989 as a struggling singer in New Jersey and on Showtime’s Body Bags in 1993. Harry’s next solo release was Rockbird, in 1986, which was not a critical success in spite of her famous interpretive abilities on songs. As her ﬁrst output since Stein regained his health, Harry co-wrote all but one of the songs. The catchy song “French Kissin’” was a mild hit on the radio, but the record

Debbie Harry

barely made an impact, hitting ninety-seven at its peak on the Billboard 200. Like much of Blondie’s music, Harry’s song fared better in the United Kingdom, peaking at number eight. The arrival of Madonna on the pop music scene a couple of years earlier, who arguably took some fashion cues from Harry but shaped her music in a much more dance-oriented direction, diverted attention away from Harry. Harry felt that her label saw them as competition and perhaps did not know how to really distinguish them sufﬁciently enough to promote them distinctly. Ironically, Madonna’s blonde bombshell image was made more palatable for intense commercial success by the experimentation Harry herself did in the early years of Blondie. After her departure from Chrysalis, the label released Once More Into the Bleach, a collection of remixes of her own hits and Blondie classics. Her ofﬁcial third album, Def, Dumb & Blonde, came out in 1989 on Sire—ﬁfteen innocuous, fun-loving tracks of Euro-styled dance music produced with Mike Chapman. The record only hit 123 on the Billboard 200. One notable track is the synthesizer-guitar rock of “I Want That Man,” during which Harry proclaims “I wanna be the queen of the U.S.A. . . . What I really want I just can’t buy.” Again, the British were kind to her, and the song went to number thirteen on the UK charts. Harry snarls with sass and catcalls on “Bike Boy” and shout-raps in the guitar-heavy “Get Your Way.” In both songs she is so convincing and true to her roots that it is easy to forget that she was forty-three. In the 1990s, Harry appeared in the ﬁlm Heavy (1995) and Six Ways to Sunday (1999). In the midst of all of this varied activity, she managed to release another album, Debravation, in 1993. The album contains a collection of eclectic songs that were written in conjunction with Chris Stein, such as “Stability,” “Mood Ring,” “Dancing Down the Moon,” and “The Fugitive.” On “Stability,” Harry is still cool and wry; it is one of the album’s few standout tracks. She collaborated with R.E.M. on “Tear Drops” and “My Last Date (With You),” and novelist William Gibson wrote lyrics for the industrial-sounding experimental song “Dog Star Girl.” The record did not fare well and is thought to suffer from too many guest producers and contributors. Harry let her hair go back to her natural brown color and, at the age of forty-seven, was not as thin or glamorous as perhaps her fans were accustomed to. Still, her voice retains its signature nuances, even if on this album her interpretations suffer, and her charisma is still evident. Debravation would be Harry’s last solo record for fourteen years, but her music career took another intriguing turn in the mid-1990s, when she connected with the New York–based group the Jazz Passengers, a quasi–avant garde group that takes a postmodern look at jazz, standards, and original songs. Over the course of several years, she has sung on a few tracks of the group’s records, including “Dog in Sand” on its 1994 release In Love and on Individually Twisted in 1997, which was billed as “The Jazz Passengers Featuring Deborah Harry.” The album includes a reworked version of “The Tide is High” and Elvis Costello and Harry duet on “Doncha Go Way Mad.”

171

172

Women Icons of Popular Music

The Return and the “Curse” of an Aging Blondie

The comfort level with Blondie is great, but in most cases, the audience wants to hear the old music from us, rather than the future, and that is death for an artist. You have to keep moving forward.

During their years apart, band members had taken part in other musical endeavors ranging from playing in other bands to producing. Although 40 million records had sold worldwide by the early 1980s, many of their proﬁts were tangled up in legal tussles and tax problems, so perhaps a reunion was inevitable. In 1998, Blondie reunited and in 1999 released its ﬁrst —on release of her album in seventeen years, No Exit. The single “Maria” 2007 album reached fourteen on the adult Top 40 chart, and appeared on the dance music chart at the top slot of number three. The single “No Exit,” which features rapper Coolio, went to eighteen on the Billboard 200. Although the sales pale in comparison to the group’s heyday, the release helped create a new generation of Blondie fans. The supporting tour was so successful, it inspired a live record, Live in New York, which was also released in 1999. The title of 2004’s The Curse of Blondie serves as a tongue-in-cheek reference to its own difﬁcult history. The tour that was launched was a success, although the record barely slipped into the Billboard 200, never faring better than the 160 position. Some critics called it the ﬁrst strong effort from the group since Autoamerican. The sharp, sexy “Good Boys,” got great airplay on the Dance Music/Club Play chart (peaking at number seven), and disco guru Giorgio Moroder took a turn at mixing the single version. The fourteen tracks, produced by Steve Thompson, manage to sound both modern and classic Blondie. The band toured through 2003 and 2004, returning to the United Kingdom as well in 2005 for the fourth time in four years. Harry continued to maintain her edgy downtown cachet. In 2000 she was cast in a New York premiere of Cast, a dark work by English playwright Sarah Kane, which featured the use of four voices as chamber pieces. Reviews pronounced Harry as well-suited to her part, by her ability to reveal a tension between depth and surface in her character. Several years later, along with other artists who emerged from the CBGB scene in the late 1970s, Harry appeared and performed at a few concerts and rallies designed to raise money and save the club from closing; owner Hilly Kristal had been involved in rent disputes. Despite the momentum and awareness that developed and the protests, the club’s lease was not renewed by the Bowery Residents’ Committee, and Kristal was forced to shutter it. After a long recording absence Harry released Necessary Evil in 2007. In an interview on television with CNN, Harry said self-effacingly, “I really felt like I had to be creative, and get out of that lovely comfortable rut that I was in” (CNN, Showbiz Today 2007). Harry worked with New York producers Super Buddha and also with Stein as a collaborator even though their romance had long ago ﬁzzled out. Harry also collaborated with Roy Nathanson, a musician she worked with in the Jazz Passengers, on “Dirty and Deep.” The straightforward,

Debbie Harry

fast-paced rock tune “Two Times Blue” peaked at number thirteen on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play and was her ﬁrst chart hit in nearly ﬁfteen years, since 1993’s number two dance hit “I Can See Clearly.” Harry’s acting career continued to keep pace in 2007, with a role in the thriller Anamorph and a small role in the drama Elegy starring Penelope Cruz and Ben Kingsley based on Philip Roth’s novel of the same name.

MISSION, MOTIVATION, PROCESS Harry and Stein have been songwriting partners since the formative stages of Blondie: She primarily contributes lyrics and he contributes the melody and music. “The method of writing a hit song is to f---ing die and then come alive again,” Harry said in the beginning of Making Tracks, which she wrote with Chris Stein and photographer Victor Bockris—the latter of whom was the subject of the Blondie song “Victor” (Harry, Stein, and Bockris, Prologue, 1998) Although she was being a bit ﬂip, the sentiment makes sense: It is important to experience as much as possible in life, and then turn it into something new and worth remembering in musical form. Harry’s purposeful exploitation of the Blondie image may have gotten more attention than her singing. Even though one aspect of Harry-as-Blondie was indeed image-driven, the music had to work for the group to have left such an impact on listeners. In 1999, reﬂecting on how she cobbled together her sound, Harry said that when she was in her early twenties, it was difﬁcult to sing because she was “all bottled up.” To combat that, she listened to all types of singers, but it was her work with the same group of people—the band—that helped her develop her style. Part of the tension in the early days of Blondie came from manager Peter Leeds’s belief that the band was nothing without Harry; he reportedly would threaten to replace many of the male players if they complained about the way things were being handled. But the group worked well together, and it was especially insulting to Stein and Harry, who, along with Burke and Infante, really formed the backbone of the band. The group worked best when it worked together, and to his credit, Leeds connected Blondie with producer Mike Chapman, who was responsible for the sound of its breakthrough record Parallel Lines. Harry admits that Chapman challenged the band and demanded a level of professionalism and rigor that was new for them in the studio. Under his tutelage, their arrangements became tighter, making them more commercially viable. At this point in the band’s career, there were hits in the United Kingdom and Australia, and they had toured all over the world, but American radio hits eluded them. The charismatic Mike Chapman changed that with his skillful development of Parallel Lines. When it came time for recording “Heart of Glass,” they spent over three hours just getting the bass drum right. Putting together “Heart of Glass” was

173

174

Women Icons of Popular Music

especially difﬁcult, because although Harry and Stein had written it together in 1975, it was decidedly uncool at the time among their musical crowd to write a disco-funk song. Ironically, it was the album’s U.S. third single—a move that seemed desperate after releasing two songs that charted better in the United Kingdom—but it wound up being a big hit. When the record was released, it was imperative that the album sell well. The band was often kept in the dark or otherwise deceived, and this time they were told that they needed to break through in the United States to make any money on the album. Because Leeds handled every aspect of their business, they had no way to determine if he was manipulating them or not. Leeds’s mishandling of the album’s cover image was the ﬁnal straw. He had wanted all of the men in the band to smile and for Harry to frown, an idea the band was not too keen on. He also wanted to photograph them in such a way that it looked as though they were fading in and out of these “parallel lines,” a concept the group liked. It was decided that everyone would pick out the image he or she wanted, and the cover art would be spliced together accordingly. However, Leeds disregarded the selections of the group members and did what he initially wanted. Harry looks stern and the male group members are mostly smiling. The band was furious. Throughout her career as a lyricist and singer, Blondie has put together some reportedly semi-autobiographical songs—“English Boys” and “War Child” from The Hunter, for example—and Harry admitted that “Sunday Girl” was written by Stein when she was out on the road meeting radio deejays before the release of Parallel Lines trying to promote the band. When it came time for her ﬁrst solo album in over a decade, Necessary Evil, Harry found herself synthesizing her many years of experience as a band member and solo artist, characterized by dabbling with various musical genres. Harry was involved in nearly every aspect of the production, producing her own video for the album, choosing musicians and collaborators, and selecting the company to master the material. At age sixty-two, she’s more than earned the right to take the reins. The record’s material ranges from neo-noir torch material to pop-rock to 1960s girl group sounds to danceable beats and showcases her many talents and interests. She admits that she is not sure if compiling her various personas was a conscious choice. Like many songwriters, much of life and events around her are absorbed and inﬂuence her work. Overheard conversations, personal experience, items in the news all get turned into a new narrative, with a fresh approach and sound. She was vocal about two songs in particular on Necessary Evil, “Love with a Vengeance” and “What is Love,” as keys to understanding what the record is about. On her Web site, she explained that since the 1960s, we have lost the ability “to look at life with love.” She hoped that bringing the concept of love into the conversation that her songs create would help people look at each other and the world with kindness. In an interview near the release of Necessary Evil, Harry discussed her past with Blondie and how many artists half her age consider her an inspiration, from

Debbie Harry

her trashcan punk rock fashion aesthetic to her good looks and her ironic cool stance. Harry demurred, though. “It’s hard for me to think that Blondie was so completely original. I don’t really think that I’m an icon. I think an icon is a statue, something that’s frozen, you know. I don’t feel like that” (Ryzik 2007).

LEGACY AND OTHER INTERESTS Harry was one of the ﬁrst artists in the music industry to become involved in fundraising concerts for AIDS awareness and research. In 1987, billed as Tiger Bomb, she and Stein appeared alongside artists such as Phillip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and poet William S. Burroughs at a concert for the AIDS Treatment Project. Harry sang a duet with Iggy Pop on the Red Hot + Blue: A Tribute to Cole Porter album (1991), which beneﬁted AIDS research. She with her cool voice and he with his gravely growl turned in a particularly campy but enjoyable rendition of “Well Did You Evah,” which is one of the record’s highlights. In 2006, the designer Marc Jacobs created a series of T-shirts to honor Blondie’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The T-shirts featured a silk-screened, Warhol-like image of Harry available in ten colors. Proceeds were donated to her charity of choice—Riverkeeper, an environmental organization whose mission is to protect the Hudson River and New York City watersheds. A wildly popular design, Marc Jacobs reprised the shirt in 2007, with proceeds donated to the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. Her image is currently used in a campaign by the cosmetics company MAC Viva Glam VI, which donates sales of the Viva Glam lipsticks to the MAC AIDS Fund, a worldwide resource for people living with HIV/AIDS. Harry also lends her support campaigning for gay rights and human rights, appearing alongside Cyndi Lauper in the True Colors Tour for the Human Rights Campaign in 2007. The legacy of Blondie shows up in curious places, including the 2007 opening of the Rapture Café in downtown New York, named for the band’s hit. Overall, its impact on the New York downtown music scene cannot be understated. The prologue to Deborah Harry: Platinum Blonde by biographer Cathay Che begins with the scene of an all-female rock tribute band performing Blondie covers in an anonymous New York basement club to a very engaged, enthusiastic crowd. Harry and Stein stand in the back of the room, curious. The musicians onstage include women from various rock, indie, punk, and other bands, all inﬂuenced by the assertive, strong presence of Debbie Harry herself. Kate Schellenbach, drummer for the inﬂuential but short-lived all-female band Luscious Jackson, which was popular in the 1990s, said that Blondie inspired her to frequent the seminal club CBGB as a teenager. There, she met her future bandmates, which changed her life. Schellenbach even played at a show in New York with Blondie in the late 1990s when regular drummer Clem Burke could not make it. Harry returned the favor and appeared on the band’s album Electric Honey.

175

176

Women Icons of Popular Music

Many other artists have tackled Blondie’s best hits. But perhaps the most unusual interpretation of “Heart of Glass,” other than the one by Chet Atkins, comes from the postmodern jazz-rock trio The Bad Plus, whose thoughtful deconstruction of the song swings, slides, and pauses where the original consistently propels and pulsates. The trio resists the urge to indulge the song’s signature melody line until nearly the very end, when drummer David King throws the song full-steam into the signature rhythm, crashing cymbals and all. It’s a playful, intuitive, and surprising interpretation of a classic pop song. From tribute bands to inspired covers to her inﬂuence on fashion (see sidebar), Debbie Harry’s legacy proves that Blondie is more than just a band

Punk Rock Fashion Icon With an uncanny ability to turn unlikely items such as trashcan liners and zebraprint pillowcases into fashion statements, Deborah Harry established her status as an icon for the punk/new wave set during the 1980s. Her sense of style, culled from Europe, New York, and punk rock’s do-it-yourself ethos certainly helped, along with her facility in taking charge of her image, a skill she honed while in beauty school. During Blondie’s heyday in the late 1970s and early 1980s she often donned miniskirts, jumpsuits, and work by international designers such as Kansai Yamamoto, Thierry Mugler, and Claude Montana. Harry epitomized a certain kind of downtown chic, making creative use of clothing and embracing young designers, most notably the work of American Stephen Sprouse in the late 1970s, whose initial designs incorporated elements of 1960s attire with day-glo colors and an urban touch, such as graffiti-inspired prints. With angular bangs, a choppy haircut, black leather, and makeup that favored kohl-rimmed eyes and bright and/or glittery eye shadow, Harry’s overall look was entirely New Wave. The nascent form of music videos became yet another venue to hone her image. In the “Hangin’ on the Telephone” video she appears in a stylish black sheath dress. She dances around in the video for “Heart of Glass” looking glamorous, twirling a diaphanous sheet of material to the disco beat. Harry’s approach to image-making was complex and well considered; she could seamlessly transition from underground fashion renegade to old-fashioned movie star glamour, especially with her blonde hair as an accessory. Her ability to incorporate seemingly disparate design elements or trends has most noticeably impacted other blonde bombshells, whether it’s the leather, short skirts, and appropriation of underwear as outerwear of Madonna, or punked-up plaid and bare midriffs by Gwen Stefani, who has her own fashion line, L.A.M.B. Both Madonna and Stefani acknowledge Harry as an influence. All three women take pieces of various cultures and movements and transform them into something unique, often with a heavy, ironic wink toward Marilyn Monroe.

Debbie Harry

that married garage rock and girl group sensibilities. Its balance of art and commerce proves that one need not sacriﬁce the former to achieve the latter. Vocally, Harry’s versatility was a manifestation of a desire to self-consciously toy with conventional ideas of female singers: kitten, vamp, tigress, and everything in between. Many female singers who grew up revering new wave, punk, outspoken females or some combination thereof owe some debt to Harry, especially the spate of 1990s indie rock bands with prominent females such as Belly, the Breeders (themselves an offshoot of the Pixies), Hole, and L7. Notably, Harry’s inﬂuence touches both independent and commercial music, from the punk-pop (and risqué fashion antics) of Karen O of the arty and aggressive New York band Yeah Yeah Yeahs to the extraordinarily successful imagerenovator Madonna. Additionally, Harry’s longtime friendship and collaboration with Stein, spanning thirty years, is an indication of her artistic merit, and her bravery in releasing a pop album at the age of sixty-two testiﬁes to her interest in creating smartly crafted pop music.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Blondie Plastic Letters. Chrysalis, 1977 Parallel Lines. Chrysalis, 1978 Eat to the Beat. Chrysalis, 1979 Autoamerican. Chrysalis, 1980 No Exit. Beyond, 1999 The Curse of Blondie. Sanctuary, 2003

Solo KooKoo. Chrysalis, 1981 Rockbird. Geffen, 1986 Def, Dumb & Blondie. Sire, 1989 Debravation. Sire/Reprise, 1993 Necessary Evil. Eleven Seven Music/ADA, 2007

FURTHER READING Bayley, Roberta. Blondie Unseen: 1976–1980. London: Plexus Publishing, 2007. Berger, Arion. “Debbie Harry biography.” The New Rolling Stone Album Guide. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004. Available online at www.rollingstone.com/ artists/deborahharry/biography. Brantley, Ben. “A Playwright Foretelling her Doom.” New York Times (November 11, 2000).

177

178

Women Icons of Popular Music

Che, Cathay. Deborah Harry: Platinum Blonde, A Biography. London: Carlton Publishing/Andre Deutsch, 2005. Christgau, Robert. “Necessary Evil. Review.” Rolling Stone online (October 18, 2007). Available at www.rollingstone.com/artists/deborahharry/albums/album/184464/ review/5943316/debravation. CNN. October 21, 2007. “Deborah Harry’s Necessary Evil: Blondie Frontwoman Releases Her First Solo Album in 14 Years.” Available online at www.cnn.com/ video/#/video/showbiz/2007/10/21/quan.soundcheck.deborah.harry.cnn. Cohen, Debra Rae. “Eat to the Beat. Review.” Rolling Stone 305 (November 29, 1979). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/blondie/albums/album/210132/ review/6067915/eat_to_the_beat. DeCurtis, Anthony. “Rockbird. Review.” Rolling Stone 492 (January 29, 1987). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/deborahharry/albums/album/ 124056/review/5940805/rockbird. George-Warren, Holly, Patricia Romanowski, and Jon Pareles. “Blondie Biography.” The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001. Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/blondie/biography. Harry, Debbie, Chris Stein, and Victor Bockris. Making Tracks: The Rise of Blondie. New York: Da Capo Press, 1998. Harry, Deborah. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. See www.deborahharry.com. Helligar, Jeremy, and Helene Stapinski. “Bleach Blond: After 16 Years Apart, Blondie Takes To the Comeback Trail With a New Album and a U.S. Tour.” People (January 11, 1999). McDonnell, Evelyn. “Debravation. Review.” Rolling Stone 667 (October 14, 1993). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/deborahharry/albums/album/ 184464/review/5943316/debravation. O’Brien, Lucy. She Bop II: The Deﬁnitive History of Women in Rock, Pop and Soul. London: Continuum Press, 2002. Palmer, Robert. “The Pop Life.” New York Times (November 28, 1980). Palmer, Robert. “The Pop Life.” New York Times (July 15, 1981). Powers, Ann. “Blondie Proves (Again) It’s a Group, Not a Girl.” New York Times (February 21, 1999). Rachlis, Kit. “Plastic Letters. Review.” Rolling Stone 262 (April 6, 1978). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/blondie/albums/album/178492/review/5946643/ plastic_letters. Rockwell, John. “The Pop Life.” New York Times (October 12, 1979). Ruhlmann, William. “Eat to the Beat. Review.” All Music Guide online. Available online at www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=ADFEAEE47817D849AA7E2 0C79A3E52DBB57DF702FE5AFB86112F0456D3B82D4BBD0E4FE06BC2AB 81B0FA6AB571B0FD2EA45D43D0C0EA53F6D8642D5DF0&sql=10:0ifuxqq 5ld6e. Shepherd, Richard. “Spooﬁng Mysteries.” New York Times (September 26, 1980). Tucker, Ken. “Blondie. Review.” Rolling Stone 236 (April 7, 1977). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/blondie/albums/album/248822/review/5941424/ blondie.

Courtesy of Sire/Photofest

Chrissie Hynde

180

Women Icons of Popular Music

OVERVIEW

It’s not that I wanted to go to bed with the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, it’s that I wanted to be like them. They were wild and free, with this sense of adventure— everything you want when you’re young.

As lead singer for the rock group the Pretenders, Chrissie Hynde occupies a unique spot as an icon— she is the female focal—and vocal—point for an otherwise all-male group. Although she came of age in the post-punk late 1970s she also grew up listening to British Invasion bands such as The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, The Who, David Bowie, and the Kinks. Hynde took in all of those inﬂuences and ﬁltered them into her own particular worldview, musically and lyrically. Indeed, Hynde also distinguishes herself because most of her inﬂuences—explicit and implicit—have historically been male. Because of her group’s strong UK leanings and success abroad coupled with the fact that Hynde was the only American in the band in its ﬁrst incarnation, many Americans have mistaken the group for an entirely British rock outﬁt. As a vocalist, she brings a cool, knowing female perspective to the music and as a musician, she offers guitar skills generally regarded as among the best in the business, regardless of gender. With her ragged, long bangs; kohl-rimmed eyes and evasive way with eye contact; and simple but effective clothing such as jeans, black T-shirts, leather (which at times was controversial, given her animal rights record), and boots, Hynde made herself over in a slightly androgynous version of a male rock star. The genesis of the band’s name reveals a sense of play, of aspiration, and of humor, too. Hynde told Billboard in 1995 that she was in a room with a biker at a motorcycle club who played a song for her behind locked doors, because he didn’t want his friends to hear how important it was to him. That song was the Sam Cooke version of “The Great Pretender.” The moment was so moving that it inspired her band’s name. The band itself reached nearly immediate commercial success with its ﬁrst record. Its 1980 debut, Pretenders, landed on Rolling Stone magazine’s Top 500 Albums of All Time list at number 155. Sustaining that level was not easy as childrearing, band member deaths, and personnel changes forced Hynde to take time off, reconsider, and bring in new ideas. But for the better part of thirty years, the group released records that have done well critically and commercially and performed live shows that were a particularly important component to understanding its energy and ambitions. The Pretenders as a group cannot boast a proliﬁc output, but, rare among many musicians, it can boast respect and admiration of its peers, and it can boast a fairly consistent commercial and critical acclaim for the mere eight studio albums released in nearly thirty years together, several of which went platinum. All of the Pretenders albums have appeared on some Billboard chart, but arguably the group’s most successful records, commercially speaking, came in the early 1980s and early 1990s. However, a new chart, Top Independent

Chrissie Hynde

Albums, rated 2002’s Loose Screw as number eight, proving that the Pretenders could not only retain an audience but also ﬁnd a new one in the changing landscape of the major label system. Their songs “Brass in Pocket,” “Don’t Get Me Wrong,” and “Night in My Veins” all deal with love, sex, desire, passion, ambition, and all the blurry lines in between in an intelligent, wry manner, with unﬂinching honesty. Articulating lyrics in “Brass in Pocket” such as “I’m special . . . So special/I’m gonna have some of your attention, give it to me” in your ﬁrst Top 20 hit certainly helps set your agenda and establish a direct sense of purpose. Still, surprisingly, the Pretenders have not been recognized with a Grammy Award. And then there’s the simple matter of Hynde’s iconic status. Some critics contend that through the years, the Pretenders music has become less edgy and hard—calling it softer and more pop-oriented—but the songwriting and Hynde herself never let things devolve into mediocrity. Although Hynde was not the ﬁrst female to front an all-male rock band, her tough-but-cool demeanor has inﬂuenced a number of other bands with a similar male-female ratio or mix and a similar aesthetic on both sides of the Atlantic, whether it is Garbage, Elastica, or Sonic Youth. Solo artists such as Courtney Love, the singer and widow of Kurt Cobain from Nirvana, and younger stars such as Avril Lavigne bear some of Hynde’s inﬂuence, too. Famously, Hynde once made a how-to list of ten things budding female rock stars should do, a ten commandments of sorts. One of them decreed: “Don’t think that sticking your boobs out and trying to look f---able will help. Remember you’re in a rock and roll band. It’s not ‘f--- me,’ it’s ‘f--- you!’ ” (Johnson 2003). Decrees like that have secured her an unassailable reputation in rock and roll history as tough, smart, and uncompromising. The group’s lineup has changed considerably over the years, but Hynde herself has kept the band together. Thus it is synonymous with her name and her image more than any other member. A reluctant icon, Hynde insisted that the idea of a band is about what can be created as a group, not as an individual. She has also spoken in ways that somewhat deny her gender. When asked by Holly George-Warren in Rolling Stone if there are double standards for men and women in rock and roll, Hynde said no, but her remark was starkly idealistic. “That’s the beauty of rock. It’s what Charles Mingus described as ‘the colorless island that musicians live on’ that goes beyond these distinctions and discriminations” (George-Warren 1997).

EARLY YEARS Hynde grew up as the second child in a working-class family in Akron, Ohio. She has an older brother named Terry. Her father, Melville “Bud” Hynde, worked at the telephone company and her mother, Dolores, worked part time as a secretary and also owned a hair salon. Her father’s father worked for a

181

182

Women Icons of Popular Music

rubber company and her mother’s father was a cop. Growing up as a child of the 1960s she admired The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, and Iggy Pop of the Stooges. She read a guitar book that taught her chords, and she said she never played along with records. Early experiences had an unusually strong impact on her. Being exposed to live music at the age of fourteen changed her irrevocably. She went to see Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels at an outdoor venue near her hometown in northeastern Ohio. At the end of the afternoon set, a ﬁght broke out onstage, and, entranced, she stayed for the evening show. Still, even though she was captivated by the dramatic antics, she did not necessarily idolize those who were on stage; instead, she wanted to be them. As Scott Cohen described her in Spin magazine in 1986, Hynde cannot imagine herself as anything or anyone else, nor does she seem comfortable with her own stardom, success, or fame, illustrating the sometimes uneasy relationship between one’s image and ambition. However, he wrote, “there isn’t anyone she would want to be, not even for a moment, but there are people she wouldn’t mind smelling for a moment, or being near, or touching . . . ”(Cohen 1986). Ambivalence would become something her music would explore. Other early experiences had a formative impact on the sort of adult female rocker she would become. Getting her period at age thirteen enraged Hynde, who thought it would not happen to her, which suggests an uneasiness about femininity. An assignment she completed in class at age twelve—she was asked to think of a word and then write a poem about the word—prompted a contemplation on England, where she eventually would move and live for most of her life. Its rural landscape, she would reﬂect later, resembled the hills of Ohio of her youth. When it came time for college, Hynde initially wanted to be a painter and was accepted at Ontario College of Art in Toronto. However, she didn’t enroll, because she couldn’t afford to do so. Instead, she chose Kent State University in Ohio and happened to be a witness to the tragic killings in 1970. While she was at Kent State, she formed her ﬁrst ofﬁcial band, and some of its members went on to form the group Devo. She waitressed at a diner when she was in college and listened to a lot of Velvet Underground, the Stooges, and similar bands. For her twenty-ﬁrst birthday her parents wanted to give her a watch, but she asked for a Melody Maker guitar. It was the beginning of a lifelong obsession with guitars. She didn’t last long in college, and seeking inspiration elsewhere, Hynde went to London in 1973. She left with a copy of New Music Express that contained an article about Iggy Pop, three records—Raw Power, Fun House, and White Light, White Heat—and about $500. She lent the records to someone and never saw them again, and while she was lamenting this at a party where she knew no one, someone chimed in and said he knew Iggy Pop. That someone was NME journalist Nick Kent, who took a liking to Hynde. Kent helped her get a start in London, and for a period of time, Hynde became a rock critic. She found herself in the middle of the United Kingdom’s punk

Chrissie Hynde

rock explosion and even worked for a time at Malcolm McLaren’s SEX boutique. While abroad, she befriended the members of what would become the Sex Pistols (notoriously inﬂuential despite the fact that they only released one album) and the Clash, but she was not able to put together her own group. She moved back to Cleveland around 1975 and waitressed for a while, but she had trouble being polite, she had trouble serving people meat, and she had trouble remembering to get people their checks on time. Hynde formed a group called Jack Rabbit, which did not last long, and then moved to Tucson, which also did not last long. However, while in Tucson she received a phone call from someone in Paris whom she’d met who asked her to sing in a band he was putting together. She went to Paris and joined the Frenchies and stayed there for a bit in 1976 but then wound up back in London, acting on a hunch that it was where she was supposed to be. Malcolm McLaren hired her as guitarist in the band Masters of the Backside, but she was dismissed after a few months of rehearsals. She kept working by singing backup and/or playing guitar with a number of artists, many of them members of either the Heartbreakers or the New York Dolls, and Nick Lowe. Hynde remained committed to music and eventually gathered enough material for a demo tape of original work. It is impossible to talk about Hynde’s career without talking about the Pretenders, but before she found the members, she met manager Tony Secunda. She played him the chords for what turned into “The Phone Call,” and he decided to champion her cause and try to get her a record deal. Hynde needed a band and she needed money, so he helped pay her rent. After a time, however, they had a falling out, and she was back on her own. Hynde contacted Greg Shaw, someone she hung out with during those years, and he put her in touch with Dave Hill, who was a manager and also the founder of Real Records. He became her manager and fronted her the money to audition members and put together a band. Hynde formed the group in 1978 after writing songs with Mick Jones but some of that material ended up on the ﬁrst record by his own band, the Clash. Initially, she envisioned the band as more like a motorcycle club than a band. The original incarnation of the Pretenders included bassist Pete Farndon, guitarist James Honeyman-Scott, and drummer Martin Chambers. Farndon had spent time playing in a band in Australia before he returned to England. She liked Farndon because he didn’t play bass with a pick; meeting him led her to Honeyman-Scott, whom Farndon knew. They hired drummer Gerry Mackleduff as a session musician and recorded two of her songs, “Precious” and “The Wait,” along with a Ray Davies song, “Stop Your Sobbing.” Farndon and Honeyman-Scott knew drummer Martin Chambers from their shared hometown, Hereford. Hynde managed to persuade Nick Lowe to produce a single of “Stop Your Sobbing” in fall 1978, with a B-side called “The Wait,” based on the demo version she sent to him. The Pretenders then went to Paris for its weeklong performance debut.

183

184

Women Icons of Popular Music

CAREER PATH

I don’t think we’ll ever be mainstream. And I’m very grateful for that.

In January 1979, “Stop Your Sobbing” was released in the United Kingdom and became the band’s earliest exposure to radio audiences. The single is a mostly faithful take on the Kinks’s 1964 song, but this time, it’s drenched in a fair dose of reverb and jangly guitars. Hynde suffuses the track with subtle shifts in her mostly no-nonsense efﬁciency, and by the song’s end, she admonishes her overly effusive lover with cries of “Stop! Stop! Stop!” Her personality was established to listeners early on through this song, suggesting that one would be wise to do as Hynde says. The song hit the British Top 40 ﬁrst, but did not make much of an impact in the United States. The follow-up song, “Kid,” which Hynde wrote and Chris Thomas produced, did well in the United Kingdom too, and another song, “Brass in Pocket,” which Hynde wrote with Honeyman-Scott, was a U.K. chart topper. By the spring, the band was playing to sell-out crowds throughout the United Kingdom. The momentum grew, and ﬁnally, in May, they started to work on their debut in earnest. Hynde wrote nearly all of the album’s dozen tracks, except for the Davies cover and three that she co-wrote. Pretenders was released in January 1980 and became an instant classic, showing the group’s full, deep range of inﬂuences. The album showcases how the Pretenders took the hard, rough edges of punk and ﬁnessed them into an accessible, melodic version of rock. The album’s true gem, however, and breakthrough hit in the United States was the song “Brass in Pocket,” which featured a cheeky narrator with her sights set high for herself and her love life. The well-known lyrics Hynde sings have her declaring “I’m gonna use my arms/Gonna use my legs . . . gonna use my imagination.” The video helped cement Hynde’s image as she appears as a reluctant but seductive waitress at a diner, intermittently waiting on members of the band. You get the feeling she’ll bring your meal when she’s good and ready to do so, and you’d be wise not to ask for it twice. One of the strengths of the Pretenders songs, on display throughout the debut, is that the music itself so clearly and immediately correlates with the complex emotional terrain Hynde’s voice and the lyrics set forth. Hynde’s voice takes command, but the group itself is more than up to the task of playing with her authoritative, assertive styling. Songs often employ just a few chords or ideas, but the group takes the songs to new and innovative places. Other standout tracks on the album include the ﬁrst track, “Precious,” a word that is used in a mostly sarcastic fashion. In the simple, rough, fast-paced song Hynde says in the ﬁrst line, “I like the way you cross the street ’cause you’re precious,” but she lets the title word slither out in a way that suggests she means otherwise. Ultimately, though, she rejects the object of her affection, declaring that she’s “too precious/F*** off!” In “Mystery Achievement” we get some small clue about the band’s name. The “mystery achievement” could easily be interpreted as a lover, or even her career. In the last line of the

Chrissie Hynde

185

song, Hynde says “but you know me/I love pretending.” The song “Private Life,” employs a reggae-like She’s a tough broad, the guitar riff that sounds like it was pulled from a B-side ultimate role model. —feminist scholar of a record by the Police, one of the group’s contemCamille Paglia poraries. Overall, the record’s twelve tracks represent a reasonable template for the emotional and sonic terrain the Pretenders would traverse over the course of the next twenty or so years. In the United States, “Private Life” was a Top 20 hit, going to number fourteen on the pop singles chart; in the United Kingdom, where they had more name recognition, it went to number one; it also hit number one in Australia. Its success, though, was not so easy for Hynde to endure; she was embarrassed by it. Pretenders fared extremely well for a debut—its best position was number nine on the pop albums chart and it sold a million copies. The group was distinguished by its 1960s-style pop sound, which was a perfect foil to Hynde’s sassy lyrics and erotic delivery. After a year and a half, the second album, Pretenders II, was released in August 1981. With some mixed reviews from critics, it nevertheless fared well commercially and peaked at number ten on the pop albums chart. Critics thought that their sophomore attempt lacked the edginess and sexual aggressiveness of the debut but that in some ways, Pretenders II was even more daring. The Pretenders’s strength is not from stellar musicianship or innovation but rather from Hynde and her ability to play a character—to pretend, shall we say. The record has some great songs, ones that mostly show a logical progression from the debut. “Message of Love” is punctuated by jagged guitar riffs that remind one of the Clash. The song went to number ﬁve on the mainstream rock charts. In Pretenders II Hynde and the band are charting slightly more moody and unpredictable waters, navigating fame, isolation, love, and sex. In the midtempo “Talk of the Town,” Hynde exhibits some existential angst, saying “you’ve changed your place in this world” and “it’s hard to live by the rules/I never could and still never do.” Elsewhere, another Ray Davies song made it onto the record, “I Go to Sleep,” which was not much of a surprise; Hynde had been dating her idol Ray Davies and appearing on the road with the Kinks. When Chambers injured his hand in October 1981, the Pretenders had to postpone a tour. Sadly, Pretenders II would be the last record to feature the original incarnation of the group’s lineup. In June 1982, Farndon was kicked out of the group because his drug habit was interfering with the band’s commitments, and two days later, James Honeyman-Scott died in his sleep after a cocaine overdose. Ten months after that, Farndon met his fate and died of a drug overdose too. It was a time of tremendous change— Hynde was pregnant by Ray Davies and in 1983 gave birth to a daughter, Natalie. Hynde and Davies never married.

186

Women Icons of Popular Music

Chambers and Hynde were deeply affected by their bandmates’ deaths. When pressed for comment, Hynde only told the Associated Press she was “shocked.” She and Chambers reassembled the Pretenders with bass player Malcolm Foster and guitarist Robbie McIntosh, whom Scott had recruited earlier when the band had considered adding another guitarist. They worked together on a song in time for Christmas, “2000 Miles,” and put together a successful third release, Learning to Crawl produced by Chris Thomas, in 1984. With a polished sound throughout, the record’s material eulogizes the deaths of the two members and also ﬁnds Hynde angry about the rampant development of her Ohio hometown, thus infusing the material with a sense of righteousness. “Middle of the Road” leads off the album and ﬁnds Hynde as feisty as ever. Audiences liked it too, and it garnered a fair amount of radio play to reach number nineteen on the Billboard Hot 100. In “My City Was Gone,” about her hometown, she laments the loss of the downtown, the train station, and her favorite places, “reduced to parking spaces.” The song hit number eleven. Hynde was never one to resort to simple sentimentality, and instead, in a song like “Middle of the Road,” she just plainly tells us that she’s “standing in the middle of life/with my past behind me.” The directness of such a lyric is disarming and deeply affecting. The album’s second track, “Back on the Chain Gang,” was a tremendous hit. Hynde had started the song years before and revisited it as a eulogy to Honeyman-Scott. The bittersweet, instantly catchy song starts off with the lyrical reminiscence, “I found a picture of you/Oh oh oh oh” and laments the loss of a loved one. Hynde likens the return to making music and reforming the band to a chain gang, but it’s an affectionate moniker; she talks about “a circumstance beyond our control” and “the wretched life of a lonely heart.” The song appeared in the mainstream rock and pop singles charts, topping out at number four and number ﬁve respectively. It has become one of their most beloved hits. The song was quickly recorded after Honeyman-Scott’s death with guitarist Billy Bremner (formerly of Rockpile) and bassist Tony Butler (Big Country) and was a hit before the record was even released. Rolling Stone dedicated lengthy space to its review of Learning to Crawl, praising it as a triumph in light of the band’s tragic losses and lauding Hynde for her ability to be intimate in a real rock and roll context. But those intimate lyrics also covered topics that few other artists, male or female, were chronicling with such unﬂinching honesty and nuance—speciﬁcally, motherhood and domesticity. These topics receive her wry insights as she unﬂinchingly looks at them in songs such as “Watching the Clothes” and “Thumbelina” and the heartrending “Show Me.” Fans and music lovers responded kindly, as the record was a tremendous success. Learning to Crawl achieved platinum status within three months of its release, and reached number ﬁve on the Billboard 200. In 1986, instead of hiring full-time band members, Hynde assembled another incarnation of the Pretenders that included McIntosh and session

Chrissie Hynde

musicians for Get Close, the record that they released the following year. Hynde claimed she did not set out to write a whole bunch of songs about the moon—half the songs on Get Close contain some element of lunar imagery— but she had lived through a lot of trauma in the previous ﬁve years—death, births, a relationship break-up, and then marriage to the singer Jim Kerr of the British group Simple Minds. The album’s song “Don’t Get Me Wrong,” another knowing pop song about love, went into the Top 10 in 1986. Some critics dismissed it as a triﬂe and also remarked that Get Close sounded nothing like the band, probably because it had seen such an extreme change in personnel. Hynde had gone with a different producer, Bob Clearmountain, known for his extensive work with smart pop bands (including Simple Minds), and the difference in production is pronounced. But Hynde’s lyrics are less acerbic than she is known for. Lyrics such as “I’m a peasant/Dressed as a princess,” make us wonder, when Hynde has ever really been concerned about looking pretty? Some of the songs here show a fondness for soul and dance music, which can somewhat be attributed to the addition of funk keyboardist Bernie Worrell to the record. Regardless of such complaints, the album achieved gold status, peaked at number twenty-ﬁve on the Billboard 200, and launched a handful of songs onto the radio—the aforementioned “Don’t Get Me Wrong;” “My Baby,” which went to number one on the mainstream rock tracks chart and, a year later, number sixty-four on the Billboard Hot 100; and “Where Has Everybody Gone?,” which landed at twenty-six on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. Even Hynde’s take on the Jimi Hendrix song “Room Full of Mirrors” hit the charts. Hynde recorded the Sonny and Cher hit “I Got You Babe” in 1985 with UB40 and in 1988 recorded her second duet with them, “Breakfast In Bed.” An ad hoc kind of greatest hits collection, The Pretenders: The Singles came out in 1987 and fared reasonably well, hitting sixty-nine on the Billboard 200. The late 1980s were turbulent, though. The Pretenders launched a tour of the United States in 1987 and had trouble maintaining a steady line-up; musicians were ﬁred and replaced. Even McIntosh was gone by the end; former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr was hired to replace him. Hynde was the only original member left. The 1990s to Current Day: New Decade, New Transitions When she started gathering material for 1990’s album Packed!, Hynde was essentially the only Pretender left, and the record did not seem to some reviewers to be as strong an effort as previous ones. It barely made it into the Top 50, peaking at forty-eight on the Billboard 200, but one of its songs, “Never Do That,” fared well on the modern rock chart. Some of the songs deal with unrequited love, which is a departure from the usual perspective of Hynde’s lyrics. Packed! isn’t full of just love songs; the lilting ballad “Criminal,”

187

188

Women Icons of Popular Music

for instance, was written when she was visiting Akron and reﬂects a sense of Hynde’s hometown, as does the rocking, complex homage “Downtown (Akron).” The conclusions about the album’s material, though, are not altogether unfounded; her marriage to Kerr dissolved that same year, 1990. (The pair have a daughter together, Yasmin, who was born in 1985.) The record did not even chart well in the United Kingdom, which had previously been a receptive market for the band’s music. In 1993, the Best of the Pretenders sold well, which was a strong indicator of the group’s longevity. However, some members of the press saw the group’s next album, Last of the Independents, as a comeback of sorts. In 1994, the group reformed after a period of losing key players and seeking replacements, including guitarist Adam Seymour and bassist Andy Hobson. Last of the Independents was released in May with original drummer Martin Chambers back in the line-up; many fans and critics had speculated that she had ﬁred him around the time of Get Close, which would help explain his absence. The Pretenders sounded like a band again for the ﬁrst time in a decade. Of the process of regrouping, Hynde joked with Billboard, saying that “some women need a man—I need a band!” (Bessman 1994). Last of the Independents reinvigorated the Pretenders. The song “I’ll Stand By You,” a torchy ballad that’s sentimental by Pretenders standards, turned up on a number of different Billboard charts (Adult Contemporary, Modern Rock), but reaching number eleven on the Top 40 chart. Other standout tracks include the sexy “Night in My Veins,” which was a number two modern rock hit. The success of these two songs helped the album land at number forty-one on the Billboard 200—an admirable accomplishment for a group that had not released a studio album in four years. In 1995, the same lineup of the Pretenders released an acoustic record, Isle of View, which was a result of two evenings’ worth of live recordings with the Duke String Quartet. For the casual fan, this album probably escapes notice— Isle of View went to 100 on Billboard 200—but for fans who are interested in spare versions of some of the band’s hits, it is a worthwhile investment. Twenty years into the band’s career, the Pretenders appeared at Lilith Fair and proved, with kudos from other performers, that the group was still inﬂuential and fresh. Songs from Viva El Amor!, released in June 1999, were performed during Lilith Fair and played with a strange mix of laid-back energy. For many of the women on the tour circuit with Lilith Fair the Pretenders’s participation gave them the opportunity to play alongside one of their idols. Viva El Amor!’s arresting cover art, in black and red and white, was styled after a propaganda poster, with Hynde raising her ﬁst in the air. The photograph was taken by the late Linda McCartney. The album fared respectably on the charts and was reviewed well. Hynde’s sexy but angry voice and phrasing once again are balanced by the band’s tight backing, which complements her lyrics in unexpected ways. The result is clean, tough, and compelling. For example, the song “Human” is a matter-of-fact, upbeat contemplation of

Chrissie Hynde

189

one’s foibles and strengths without sounding simple. Radio liked it so much that it peaked at number thirty I’ve adapted along the way, on the Adult Top 40. Elsewhere, “Popstar” is snarky but philosophically, I’m the and sinewy, and the lyrics indict those who are aspir- same vegetarian hippie ing for fame. One of her favorite guitarists, Jeff Beck, musician I was when I left makes an appearance on the full-throttle “Legalise home for London with Me.” Throughout the record’s dozen tracks, Hynde everything I owned in one does not indulge in sentimentality, and the record suitcase . . . except now I’m retains a fairly consistent feel even if there are no more comfortable with monstrous pop hits that demand attention or, for that everything. matter, bring the record to anything better than a 158 position on the Billboard 200. In 2002, the laid-back, reggae-inﬂuenced Loose Screw was released on Artemis Records. The content shows maturity—at ﬁfty-one, with two grown daughters (ages eighteen and twenty at the album’s release), Hynde has learned a few things, yet her voice sounds as young and timeless as ever, and Hynde is just as ﬁery. Much of the content remains somewhat consistent—love, sex, death, inﬁdelity, alienation—which is rendered with her own archness fused with deﬁance and fury, especially on the sharp riffs of “Lie to Me.” With a chorus that repeats the threat “if you lie to me again” several times, it’s a more grown-up version of “Stop Your Sobbing.” Still, an aging rocker cannot escape contemplating how time changes things and how one becomes wiser, and those elements are especially evident on “Fools Must Die” and “The Losing,” both of which deal with mortality. The single “Complex Person” comments on guns, construction workers, and feminism with ease. And in the bass-heavy reverb in “I Should Of,” she wishes for the beneﬁt of hindsight when looking back on the failures of a dissolved relationship. Hynde pulls no punches; she is ﬁrmly secure in her persona. Hynde even covers a Latin song, “Walk Like a Panther.” Many of the tunes were written in the wake of the break-up of her second marriage to Colombian sculptor Lucho Brieva. The band toured in early 2003 in support of Loose Screw, since through its history, touring has proven to be a crucial component of its success. In a time when music videos are increasingly rare and television seems to cater to younger artists or the older, multimillion-selling artists for appearances, a group like the Pretenders must sustain itself in new ways. The challenge in the music business still remains for artists who are older and who came of age when radio play made a difference and people more regularly bought albums based on that exposure. The model is breaking down somewhat, thanks to the advent of the Internet, but commercial radio does not quite know what to do with the Pretenders other than to lump the band into “classic rock,” which it is not. With the rise of Internet downloading and label consolidation, legacy artists such as the Pretenders do not often receive much airplay and are often not the priority of labels seeking to turn a maximum proﬁt with minimal effort. When Loose Screw was released, the record business was a much leaner

190

Women Icons of Popular Music

and more ﬁscally conservative enterprise, generally speaking, than when the Pretenders released its debut. Hynde made a small number of television appearances to promote the band, but her frustration was evident. The Pretenders were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005. The honor was especially poignant considering the museum’s location in Cleveland in Hynde’s home state, but also because of the afﬁrmation of the longevity of their career. Drummer Chambers accepted the induction in honor of the original band members Farndon and HoneymanScott. In 2006, the Pretenders’s ﬁrst ever box set was released, called Pirate Radio, boasting four discs and more than ﬁve hours of music along with a DVD of rare performance footage. The group had never completely stopped touring, but a comment Hynde made in 2006 was taken out of context; some fans thought she said she was going to retire after she said at an Atlantic City, New Jersey, concert that it was the last show—she meant it was the last show of the tour. Rest assured, Hynde and the Pretenders still have music to make. The band is slated to release a new record sometime in 2008.

Rock ’n’ roll gives us the sense of community we lack, but the commercial importance we sometimes place on it shows how vapid people have become spiritually.

MISSION, MOTIVATION, PROCESS As much as Hynde is a front woman, she is, more importantly, a band member and functions best as part of a tight, musically in-sync unit, no matter how singular her image may be. The model of the Pretenders even paved the way for other similar, female-fronted bands (see sidebar). To some extent, the difﬁculty of keeping a band together over the course of many years can be attributed to the periods of time during which the group did not record or when records that did not fare well. After the deaths of two key members, it quickly became apparent that if the Pretenders were to keep making music, Hynde would need to take an active role in ensuring its longevity, and her steely determination has enabled that to happen. David Wild of Rolling Stone once asked her if she ever thought of becoming a solo artist, and she demurred, saying that despite the struggle over the years maintaining a good lineup, “I’ve never had any interest in Chrissie Hynde, and I wouldn’t go see her. I like bands” (Wild 1994). Yet as much as Hynde might be perceived as a solo artist with a band, she truly thrives on the dynamic among the band members. For the ﬁrst time in nearly a decade, after the success of several Pretenders records, band tragedy, and personnel changes, Hynde reunited with drummer Martin Chambers for the group’s album Last of the Independents. Adam Seymour was added on guitar. The collaboration of Chambers and Hynde had a substantial impact

Chrissie Hynde

Behind Every Woman Stands a Group of Men Although the personnel has changed considerably through the band’s twenty years together, Chrissie Hynde is singlehandedly recognized as the Pretenders. With her tough but sexy persona as the lead singer of an all-male band, Hynde paved the way for many other front women to follow in her path. Whether it is Justine Frischmann of the U.K. rock band Elastica, Gwen Stefani of No Doubt (who has since launched a highly successful solo career), or the Deal sisters in the punk-infused band the Pixies, most of whose members are male, Hynde became a model for how other women could navigate the sometimes murky and sexually charged waters of fronting a band—or playing a significant and visible role at the very least—comprised of men. The rock band Garbage, fronted by Scot Shirley Manson, hit it big with its 1995 debut self-titled album, abetted by the hit “Stupid Girl.” Like the Pretenders, the three other members of the band are men, and Garbage became known for its grungy pop-rock sprinkled with samples and loops, delivered with Manson’s sultry voice and angry lyrics. Nominated for seven Grammys, Garbage is frequently referenced by critics as a band that bears the influence of the Pretenders. In fact, Shirley Manson even wrote a song called “Special,” which cribbed a line from the group’s “Talk of the Town,” and Garbage’s lawyers urged them to remove it. But they sought and received permission from Hynde herself. Manson, along with seminal punk artist Iggy Pop, also paid tribute to the group at a 2006 VH-1 Decades Rock Live television special and appeared with her idol to share the stage during the Pretenders song “Talk of the Town” and the Garbage song “I’m Only Happy When it Rains.”

on the album, particularly via “Money Talk,” “All My Dreams,” “977,” and “Love Colours.” Hynde seems to downplay the role of bandleader at times and also downplay her own ability as a rhythm guitarist with a career-long preference toward Fender Telecasters. She said she had trouble playing along with records, and because she couldn’t, it inadvertently jump-started her songwriting career. She does not use a tape recorder and does not save anything on a laptop computer. Her process is to strum some chords till she either ﬁnds the right inspiration for the song in mind or until she gets stuck. Sometimes, she’ll pass the workin-progress off to a guitar player who will take it in another direction and breathe life into it. Such trust in collaboration is in keeping with her band mentality. Plus, when it comes to the qualities of what makes a good song, she believes what matters is not money, technology, or knowledge of chords or how to do it at all. Hynde emphasized the importance of how the song feels, and noted that if it sounds too clean or polished, the song sometimes loses a sense of truthfulness.

191

192

Women Icons of Popular Music

Hynde has been honest about some autobiographical elements that have ﬁltered into her songwriting. One of the Pretenders’s biggest early hits, “Back on the Chain Gang,” opens with the lyric and recurring statement “I found a picture of you.” The song morphed from two places; ﬁrst from a photo of ex-relationship Ray Davies and then from the death of Honeyman-Scott. Although she put together the material for Loose Screw in the wake of the break-up of her second marriage to Brieva, Hynde disagreed with some writers and interviewers who suggested it was a break-up album. “The Losing,” for example, stems from a friend who bets on horses. Like many artists, Hynde has been inﬂuenced by her upbringing and her environment and has discussed the connection she still feels to her industrial hometown, Akron, Ohio. She says the smell of burning rubber from a nearby Goodyear plant and the aroma of oatmeal from the nearby Quaker Oats are burned into her memory. In 1995, after living in England for most of her adult life, she told Billboard about how she returns to Akron regularly with her children to visit family. The title of the acoustic versions of Pretenders hit singles and rarities, Isle of View, comes from her perspective on an island, living in England. It also, she said, sounds like “I love you” when spoken.

LEGACY AND OTHER INTERESTS In 1988, Hynde became a founding member of a group called the Ark Trust, an environmental/animal rights group that is now part of the Humane Society of the United States. Hynde, as one of its founders, became embroiled in a public controversy when she jokingly suggested in 1989 that its members should ﬁrebomb McDonald’s; she had spoken out previously against the fast food chain. Hynde, with her laid-back approach to singing and playing, is nonetheless a staunch advocate for animal rights and Greenpeace. Most notably, she has lent her support to PETA and does not eat meat. Her efforts have frequently garnered her headlines as well as legal trouble. In 2000, she and other members of PETA were accused of creating about $1000 worth of damage to a New York Gap clothing store and charged with criminal mischief and disorderly conduct, destroying leather and suede goods. In 2003, she was brieﬂy detained, along with other protesters, after partaking in an animal rights demonstration outside a KFC restaurant in Paris. That same year, she was part of a Greenpeace-led lobby of Spanish authorities regarding the impounding of a Greenpeace ship from the port of Valencia. Activists had chained themselves to the ship to protest and to block the import of timber from Cameroon’s rainforests. Hynde no longer lists her idols but rather admits to admiring certain musicians such as Neil Young and Bob Dylan. She started off idolizing the male rock stars of her youth but only insofar as she could learn from them. Female performers held less inspiration for her. Nevertheless, Hynde’s career

Chrissie Hynde

has come full circle; it’s not likely that female singers who front all-male bands can truthfully say they were not inﬂuenced by females, because Hynde made that path seem not only possible but attractive, too.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Pretenders. Sire, 1980 Pretenders II. Sire, 1981 Learning to Crawl. Sire, 1984 Last of the Independents. Sire, 1994 The Isle of View (Live). Warner Bros., 1995 Viva El Amor! Warner Bros., 1999 Loose Screw. Artemis, 2002

FURTHER READING Associated Press. “British Rock Star Dies.” (June 17, 1982). BBC News. “Hynde Deﬁant After Court Let-Off.” (May 24, 2000). Available online at news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/761995.stm. BBC News. “Hynde Asks Spain to Free Ship.” (July 2, 2003). Available online at news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3039178.stm. BBC News. “Police Break-up Hynde KFC Demo.” (July 16, 2003). Available online at news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3072265.stm. Berger, Arion. “Viva el Amor! Review.” Rolling Stone 816–817 (July 8, 1999). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/pretenders2/albums/album/212250/review/ 5940684/viva_el_amor. Bessman, Jim. “Pretenders Return with Album, Tour; Hynde Recruits New Band for Sire Set.” Billboard (April 2, 1994). Carson, Tom. “Pretenders II.” Rolling Stone 353 (October 1, 1981). Cohen, Scott. “Hynde Sight.” Spin Magazine (December 1986). Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. “Pretenders Biography.” All Music Guide. Available online at wm06.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=ADFEAEE47817D849AA7E20 C79A3E52DBB57DF702FE5AFB86112F0456D3B82D4BBD0E4FE06BC2AB8 1B0FA6AB779B0FD2EA45D43D6C0EC5EF6DE612D5DF0&sql=11:0ifuxqr5ldhe. Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. “Viva el Amor! Review.” All Music Guide. Available online at wm10.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=ADFEAEE47817D849AA7E 20C79A3E52DBB57DF702FE5AFB86112F0456D3B82D4BBD0E4FE06BC2A B81B0FB6ABC66ADFF2EA3160ED9C9EB5CFDDE765D40&sql=10:hpfrxqq kld6e. Gabarini, Vic. “Get Close. Record Reviews.” Playboy (February 1987). George-Warren, Holly. The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001. Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/ pretenders2/biography. George-Warren, Holly. “Chrissie Hynde.” Rolling Stone 773 (November 13, 1997).

193

194

Women Icons of Popular Music

Graustark, Barbara. “A Pop-porri of Recordings: Pretenders.” Newsweek (June 9, 1980). Holden, Stephen. “The Pop Life: Pretenders and Rock’s Direction.” New York Times (November 19, 1986). Hynde, Chrissie. “Rolling Stone. Top 500 Albums: Pretenders.” Rolling Stone online (November 1, 2003). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/news/story/ 6599010/155_pretenders. Hynde, Chrissie. “Rolling Stone. Behind the Lines. ‘I Found a Picture of You.’ ” Rolling Stone online (November 14, 2005). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/ artists/pretenders2/articles/story/8798823/chrissie_hynde_on_back_on_the_ chain_gang, Johnson, Brian. “The Great Pretender.” Maclean’s (February 24, 2003). Loder, Kurt. “Learning to Crawl. Review.” Rolling Stone 415 (February 16, 1984). Miller, Jim. “Straight From the Heart.” Newsweek (April 2, 1984). O’Brien, Lucy. She Bop II: The Deﬁnitive History of Women in Rock, Pop and Soul. New York: Continuum, 2002. Playboy. “An Enduring Band: The Pretenders.” Playboy 30 (June 1983). Pretenders Archives. Fan-run Web site. See www.pretendersarchives.com/news/News .html. Swenson, Kyle. “The Pretenders Uninhibited Approach to Pop.” Guitar Player 33(10) (October 1999). Tannenbaum, Rob. “The Pretenders. Get Close. Review.” Rolling Stone 491 (January 15, 1987). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/pretenders2/albums/ album/88687/review/5941428/get_close. Thigpen, David E. “Real Thing.” Time (June 27, 1994). Tucker, Ken. “The Pretenders. Review.” Rolling Stone 315 (April 17, 1980). White, Timothy. “Pretenders’ Hynde Appreciates The ‘View.’ ” Billboard (October 14, 1995). Wild, David. “Chrissie Hynde.” Rolling Stone 698 (December 29, 1994). Young, Charles M. “Packed! Record Review.” Playboy 37 (October 1990).

Courtesy of Photofest

Indigo Girls

196

Women Icons of Popular Music

OVERVIEW

The Georgia duo the Indigo Girls has given hope to all would-be poets whose careers peaked with the high-school literary magazine.

As the most prominent female duo in folk-rock music to emerge in the latter third of the twentieth century, the Indigo Girls began their career in Georgia in the 1980s and rose to success with their breakthrough —writer Mark Jenkins self-titled album in 1988. Their brand of acoustic guitar–based melodic music that has its roots in folk, blues, bluegrass, and rock and roll found them fans around the world. Although in hindsight the idea of two women with guitars harmonizing may not seem so revolutionary, at the time there were few if any prominent female singer/songwriter acts of any merit. What distinguished them was their duality and Emily Saliers’s approach, which aligned her with more traditionally introspective songwriters such as Joni Mitchell. In the early years, it was easy to distinguish a track penned by Saliers—her voice is higher and thinner, and her songs are usually more somber with abstract, spiritual, or religious undertones. As a counterpoint, Amy Ray takes her inspiration from rock and roll more than folk music, from such masculine acts as The Jam, the Pretenders, and Husker Du and songwriters such as Elton John and Neil Young. Her voice is lower, raspier, and her songs often feel more urgent, angry, or otherwise faster-paced than those that Saliers writes. In many ways, they are yin and yang, earth and sky, with Saliers’s soprano and ethereal, wispy vocals and Ray’s earthy alto working in complement. Although Saliers admits that Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell are two of her main songwriting inﬂuences, the Indigo Girls draw their inﬂuence most closely from 1960s- and 1970s-style folk duos and most consistently earn comparisons to Peter, Paul and Mary, The Kingston Trio, and Simon & Garfunkel. Both women have very different performance and writing styles: Ray’s more rock approach is balanced by Saliers’s sweetness. Regardless of their differences, all of their songs tell poignant stories. More than anything, there exists the possibility of renewal and redemption, personal change, and survival in the music of the Indigo Girls. Over the course of their twenty-year career, the duo has released eleven studio albums, several live albums, EPs, and other releases. Seven of their releases have achieved at least gold sales status; their most signiﬁcant release, Indigo Girls, is multiplatinum two times over. Worldwide, the band has sold 12 million copies. They have been nominated for seven Grammy Awards, but surprisingly have only received one thus far, for Best Contemporary Folk Album for Strange Fire in 1989. It was a promising achievement in the early part of the group’s career. The song “Closer to Fine” from Indigo Girls is arguably the band’s most inﬂuential song and is easily identiﬁable as their own. It found a home on college radio fairly quickly and subsequently inspired legions of young girls to learn how to play the guitar. Despite the fact that their Billboard singles charted most consistently from 1989 through 1997,

Indigo Girls

from “Closer to Fine” to “Shame on You,” then seemingly fell off the radar of the Billboard singles charts, their albums have continued to place on the Billboard 200, and the Top Internet Albums. Their 2006 release, Despite Our Differences, peaked at forty-four on both the Top Internet Albums and the Billboard 200 charts. And despite the lack of strong presence on the singles charts and the fact that their last album to achieve any certiﬁcation was the 1995 1200 Curfews, which achieved platinum status in August 2001, the Indigo Girls have consistently sold out their concerts, maintained their fan base, and continued to sell millions of records. Their songs, quite simply, are infectious, full of energy, and make you want to sing along. At the time that they hit the music scene, there were only a small number of female artists or female-fronted bands that attempted to discuss political, social, and spiritual issues in their music. Although social commentary is nearly omnipresent in all of their songs, the Indigo Girls avoid coming across as preachy. Their message is often characterized by a sense of poetry, a love of word play (the pair are known for being fans of the New York Times Sunday crossword), and at times, a sense of humor. Throughout their consistently appealing output, the Girls have not become too pretentious, although some critics, looking to ﬁnd fault, have accused them of just that. It is, however, hard to be considered truly pretentious if you are an artist who in the early days of your career becomes identiﬁable for wearing laid-back clothing such as ﬂannel shirts and denim. The Indigo Girls are also noteworthy for being some of the ﬁrst openly gay musicians in the 1980s. The fact that they were out, proud, and progressive helped pave the way for many other female artists who were also lesbians (see sidebar) or attracted a lesbian audience, such as k.d. lang, Michele Shocked, Ferron, Phranc, and even the Swedish band K’s Choice. As two women working together, the Indigo Girls have had a tremendous impact on the music business and established their place in history as a poetic folk-rock act with a social conscience and a love of intricate melodies. Working as a duo has permitted them to explore the duality of the subject matter they write about; their voices often echo, repeat, and work as call-and-response throughout their songwriting, which creates a deeper and broader emotional range.

EARLY YEARS As a child growing up in New Haven, Connecticut, Saliers was surrounded by music; it was a constant presence in the family. Father Don and mother Jane led songs during family trips in the car, and Emily’s upbringing—she is one of four girls—was marked by singing around the piano and in the church choir. One of Emily’s earliest songs was written around the age of ten as a protest about pollution. Although the Indigo Girls did not start working together until 1983 in Athens, Georgia, as students at Emory University, their friendship started

197

198

Women Icons of Popular Music

Leading by Progressive Example As one of the most prominent lesbian rock groups, the Indigo Girls have achieved universal acclaim, but their sexuality was rarely an obstacle for their fans. Early on, they were more likely to be pigeonholed as “chick music.” They received significant recognition for their first hit “Closer to Fine” and were welcomed enthusiastically by the lesbian community, even though their lyrics never explicitly outed them. Instead, their lyrics concentrate on a variety of political and social messages and usually hint at the redeeming power of love and friendship. The novelty of a female guitar-based, folk-rock duo concerned with progressive issues did not seem like an immediate guarantee of multiplatinum record sales. Yet, they have scored a number of radio hits including 1992’s “Galileo” and 1994’s “Least Complicated,” and they performed all three years of Lilith Fair (1997 to 1999). The duo paved the way for lesbian rockers like Melissa Etheridge and Canadian pair Tegan and Sara. Nearly twenty years after their first hit single, the Girls are still sticking to the courage of their convictions. On her 2006 album I’m Not Dead pop artist Pink collaborated with the Indigo Girls on the political song addressed to President George Bush titled “Dear Mr. President.” The song includes the ironic lyric “What kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay?” Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter is proudly out, but he has had a complicated public relationship with the issue. The Girls are reaching a younger generation who might not be familiar with them. But it’s the universal themes in their songs that have kept them popular. Their melodic, thoughtful music is essentially hopeful and earnest, even when it is politically charged or socially observant. They must be doing something right: they’ve sold more than 12 million records.

much earlier, when Ray was ten (and in the ﬁfth grade) and Saliers eleven (in the sixth grade) at Laurel Ridge Elementary School, in Decatur, Georgia, where Emily’s family had just moved. However, it was not until high school that they discovered that they liked to play music together, when they took their acoustic guitars to play at a PTA meeting. There, they discovered their gift for harmonization and the chemistry they created singing together. By 1981, they had released a tape, literally recorded in Amy’s basement, that consisted mostly of cover songs along with two originals, released under the name of Saliers and Ray called Tuesday’s Children. In the following year, Ray created a cassette of her own music called Color Me Grey. After graduation from high school, Saliers became an English major at Tulane University, and the next year, Ray went to study the same subject at Vanderbilt. However, neither of them enjoyed being so far away from home, and by 1984 they had both transferred to Emory University in Georgia.

Indigo Girls

199

While in college at Emory, they performed together as either Saliers and Ray or B-Band and ﬁrst took the It’s like singing with your name Indigo Girls in 1985. The name holds no real sister. —Emily Saliers, on singing meaning: Amy chose the word “indigo” from the dicwith Amy Ray tionary because she liked the sound of it. Although they had played together off and on for years, it was not always immediately apparent that they ought to do so for a living. In the early days, they begged club owners to let them play and gradually made a name for themselves in the bars around Atlanta, which was a supportive place for musicians. The Indigo Girls gained national attention around the same time and scene from which other bands from Georgia, such as R.E.M., the B-52’s, Let’s Active, and Drivin’ N’ Cryin’, were also emerging. For the Indigo Girls, their early success can be attributed to years of hard work and a little bit of luck, not because of any established underground rock scene. They played between other musicians’ sets and worked hard to develop their sound. Their very ﬁrst ofﬁcial release as the Indigo Girls came in the form of a seven-inch single called “Crazy Game,” which was followed in 1986 by a six-track EP engineered by a local singer/songwriter named Kristen Hall. The EP was followed by Strange Fire in 1987, which had only a 7000-copy print run but which did have the good fortune of arriving around the time that the careers of Suzanne Vega and Tracy Chapman were burgeoning. The arrival of these two artists, with their issue-oriented material and consciousnessraising lyrics, would ultimately make it much easier for an openly gay female duo slinging two acoustic guitars to gain some attention from the mainstream. As an album, Strange Fire is raw and inchoate, lacking the cohesion between the duo that characterizes their later releases. But this imbalance makes sense because they were just starting out as a legitimate musical act. It is easy to distinguish who writes what song, not only because their voices are so different but because of the content of their respective songs. For example, Saliers’s contributions are usually marked by slower, more introspective and poetic lyrics, such as the jazzy, whistle-tinged “Crazy Game” and the post-breakup tearjerker “Left Me a Fool.” Ray contributes the more ﬁery, passionate numbers such as the album’s opener, which also is the title track, propelled by chiming, heavily strummed acoustic guitars and the lyric “I come to you with strange ﬁre/I bring an offering of love.” Additionally, the pair offered a faithful cover of the Youngblood’s “Get Together.” The album spawned one of their crowd and fan favorites, “Land of Canaan,” in which they assert in the chorus, “I’m not your Land of Canaan, sweetheart/Waiting for you under the sun.” It’s a smart, sassy, up-tempo declaration of standing your own ground and championing your self-worth in the face of a relationship whose prognosis seems less than positive and healthy. Overall, though, as an early artifact of their career, Strange Fire shows an intense, unwavering preoccupation with religious motifs, spirituality, and

200

Women Icons of Popular Music

poetic explorations of one’s own emotional and psychological experiences. The Indigo Girls, in many ways, are not for the faint of heart. Additionally, when one listens to Strange Fire, it is hard to resist the —Emily Saliers temptation to read into their lyrics and wonder if the relationships they are writing about are their own— have they really bared it all for their fans? Although they started off their career with many ﬁrst-person narratives in their songs, those narratives slowly have become sharper, more personal, and clear.

In a lot of ways we’re different. We’ve got like a yin and yang thing going on.

CAREER PATH The Indigo Girls’s music caught the attention of producer Scott Litt, who had worked with R.E.M., a band whose popularity was starting to grow with the release of its 1988 album Green. The Indigo Girls’s tape of material landed on the desk of CBS executive Roger Klein, where it remained unplayed. However, when he was in Atlanta he decided to check out their live show. He came back the next night for more. Within a month, the Indigo Girls were signed to CBS’s Epic Records in Atlanta’s Buckhead Diner late one evening after a gig in 1988. The 1989 self-titled Indigo Girls earned a Grammy for Best Folk Recording that year, broke into the Billboard Top 30, and the song itself gained airplay on college stations. Within six months, the album achieved gold status, and within two years, by the end of 1991, Indigo Girls had hit platinum sales. Shortly thereafter, Epic released Strange Fire to a wider audience. The album wasn’t as well received by critics but was embraced by Indigo Girls fans and did gain the larger audience that Epic had aimed for. The song “Closer to Fine” was the ﬁrst track on the album and the one that really broke them through to a wider audience, helping to fuel sales of their records and ticket sales at concerts. The song received heavy airplay on the radio on both mainstream and college stations, as well as on MTV. In many ways, it epitomizes their sound: two acoustic guitars chiming and chasing each other, two voices communicating like a call and response, and an earnest, entreating ﬁrst line. The song itself tells of a spiritual quest. The climax of the song is positively ecstatic, its traditional formula of verse-chorus-verse-chorusbridge-chorus unremarkable, but the content and sheer earnestness of their beliefs is irresistible, even years later. The rest of the album is equally compelling. After the rousing start of “Closer to Fine,” the song “Secure Yourself” continues the journey, directing the listener “Secure yourself to heaven, hold on tight the night has come/ Fasten up your earthly burdens, you have just begun.” Somehow, though, despite the overly spiritual—call it Christian, biblical, or just plain religious— bent to their songwriting, the Indigo Girls never come across on their debut

Indigo Girls

as preachy. There is an underlying eternal optimism in their music, even as they are writing about the “Prince of Darkness,” another stellar cut that explores personal demons, or about the recollection of a childhood’s difﬁcult scars in “Kid Fears,” which features haunting backing vocals by Michael Stipe of R.E.M. “Kid Fears” actually gained them early college radio play before “Closer to Fine” broke through. Although they were practically neighbors for several years, it took a while for the Indigo Girls and R.E.M. to meet. Once they made friends with Stipe, Saliers and Ray asked the rest of the band to work with them as they were preparing their debut. In a further endorsement, the Indigo Girls spent three and a half weeks as an opening act for R.E.M. in early 1989, just prior to their major label release. Despite the fact that the two women played acoustic guitars and in the early days spent time fretting about whether to play “too many ballads” when they opened up for hard rock bands, they followed their hearts and were ultimately met with success from fans and critics alike. Audiences were intrigued by the combination, if not immediately besotted, during their early tours with R.E.M. Of course, once the album came out, critics began to swoon over the duo, praising the uniﬁed power their voices create. They were impressed, too, with the “all-stars” who assisted them on their major label debut, including the aforementioned Michael Stipe and members of the Irish band Hothouse Flowers. Additionally, most of the band R.E.M. plays on the jangling song “Tried to Be True,” which is the closest thing to roots rock on the album other than perhaps the rousing “Land of Canaan.” The album’s production is incredibly sharp, compact, and well polished with all margins of error smoothed over even if the lyrics are sometimes are too earnest. The pianodriven ballad “Love’s Recovery,” for instance, features artfully obtuse lyrics that are puzzling but somehow manage to not distract the listener too much. Regardless, the album is the stuff of dreams for most artists who make their debut, and Saliers and Ray were greeted by both critical and commercial success. They were surprised by it and had no expectations that it would go gold. The album even earned them a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Group, much to their surprise. Nomads and Beyond: Sophomore Slump? The years following the release of Indigo Girls were marked by lots of touring, which helped expand the fan base, and much artistic activity. They did several headlining tours, served as the opening act for Neil Young, and played with Joan Baez at summer 1990’s esteemed Newport Folk Festival. On the touring circuit in support of their release Nomads Indians Saints, they held fans spellbound. Their performance inspired descriptions invoking religious or spiritual fervor because of the emotional connection Saliers and Ray made through their soaring voices. The overall critical assessment of Nomads was

201

202

Women Icons of Popular Music

mixed, however. Some reviewers were generous, but others were unsparing in their criticism of the tightly packed, sometimes awkward lyrics. Other critics thought the material was not as strong overall as on their previous release. An astute reader would observe that attempts to describe the music of the Indigo Girls could often inspire similarly circular, nonsensical proclamations. Regardless of the critics’ objections, the album contains one memorable melody after another. For instance, the leadoff song, “Hammer and a Nail,” which frames life on earth through the metaphor of manual labor and entreats the listener to take care of one’s local and global environment, starts off the album with an inspiring approach and features the admirable feat of Ray singing the harmony below the melody. Ray’s voice has been described as rough compared to Saliers, and although it does have this quality, it is more useful to recognize how she uses her voice to impart a particular emotional experience for the listener. For example, in the urgent waltz “Pushing the Needle Too Far,” the raspy vocals impart a sense of desperation along with intricate ﬁnger picking on the lead guitar. Saliers joins in for harmony and for call-and-response later in the song. Additionally, the song’s strong location toward the end of the album sends a message to listeners about loss of self, losing one’s way and, in one anecdote, losing one’s mind in the face of life’s demands. The album is loaded with powerful metaphors, chiming acoustic guitars, and thoughtful, introspective lyrics. The production focuses on the voices and guitars; other instrumentation is minimal, deemphasized, and unobtrusive. Still, the yearning and sense of music as an exercise in the spiritual journey comes through loud and clear. The title Nomads Indians Saints takes its inspiration from the Ray-written song “World Falls,” in which she declares “I wish I was a nomad, An Indian or a saint/Give me walking shoes, feathered arms and a key to heaven’s gate.” And these themes come through, in “Hand Me Downs,” in which Ray declares that “everything I truly love/Comes from somewhere high above.” Still, Nomads is all about the search. “Watershed” provides another metaphor for life’s trials and for reevaulating one’s life. In short, it’s uplifting, with Ray and Saliers trading off lines one by one in verses that can be summarized by the statement that life is what you make it and that much of our experience is determined by how we respond to what life hands us. The chorus afﬁrms this. Throughout the album, the Indigo Girls demonstrate that despite any criticism about precocious poetics, they do have a talent for clarity and wordplay. Nomads, like its predecessor Indigo Girls, got some big league help. Musicians such as Peter Holsapple, John Cougar Mellencamp’s drummer Kenny Aronoff, seasoned bassist Sara Lee, singer/songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter, and R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck all lent their talents. The immediate success of Indigo Girls was a hard act to follow but when Nomads Indians Saints (1990) was released, it was nominated for a Grammy, and it eventually reached gold status.

Indigo Girls

During this time, the Indigo Girls were extremely proliﬁc, releasing three records in as many years. Their EP Back on the Bus Y’all was released in 1991 with live versions of what were starting to become some fan favorites, including “Tried to Be True,” “Prince of Darkness,” and “Kid Fears,” along with a live version of “All Along the Watchtower” by Bob Dylan. It, too, became a certiﬁed gold record and nominated for a Grammy. The Indigo Girls seemed to be on quite a proliﬁc tear, but releasing the live EP bought them some time to work on the next release. In spring 1992, Rites of Passage emerged and peaked at number twentyone on the Billboard 200 chart, achieving platinum sales by the year’s end. Many critics contend that some of their strongest songs and most diverse sounds appear on this album, such as the single “Galileo,” which ponders reincarnation and misplaced karma and entreats the listener to “call on the resting soul of Galileo/King of night vision, king of insight” in the quest for enlightenment. Although it is subtle, the song shows a degree of wry humor in the lyric “look what I had to overcome from my last life/I think I’ll write a book.” The song is noteworthy for a few reasons: It starts off with steel drum, moves to syncopated verses, and is anchored by the swell of violins. It also peaked at number ten on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks and number eighty-nine on the Billboard Hot 100. Throughout the rest of Rites, as usual the more direct and ﬁery tracks are penned by Ray and include “Jonas and Ezekial,” “Chickenman,” and the upbeat “Joking,” whose furiously paced mandolin and lighthearted lyrics suggest that perhaps they were able to successfully infuse their songwriting with some humor. The Indigo Girls also contribute a version of the Dire Straits song “Romeo and Juliet,” which gains a new dimension as a duet sung by two women: The Indigo Girls infuse it with passion. Additionally, there is the romantic Saliers tune, “Love Will Come To You,” that is a hopeful ode to a friend suffering through a broken heart, and also contemplative ballads such as “Virginia Woolf” and the appropriately haunting, strings-tinged “Ghost.” On Rites of Passage, the band adds to its list of impressive contributors and guest artists, with bassist Edgar Meyers, Jackson Browne, and ﬁddler and singer Lisa Germano. Celtic instruments such as bodhrán, uiliean pipes, and bouzouki make an appearance, adding a traditional element to their songwriting. After recording and touring at a breakneck pace, the Indigo Girls slowed down and took two years before the release of Swamp Ophelia in April 1994. The album continued to expand their fan base and debuted at number nine on the Billboard 200 chart, their best debut to date. By the end of the year, it went gold. Ironically, Ray and Saliers were interviewed by Billboard prior to the release of Swamp Ophelia, and expressed doubt about the album’s potential for singles or chart positions but did have hope for play on college radio stations. Many critics felt that Swamp Ophelia marked a turning point for the band; the eleven songs embody the passion and directness of Indigo Girls but stretch the content beyond the usual territory of tearjerker ballads, rambunctious

203

204

Women Icons of Popular Music

anthems, and the tendency to meander into somewhat didactic territory of Nomads. The album was produced by Peter Collins at Nashville’s Woodland Sound Studios. Indeed, although the title suggests a sticky, maudlin morass by simultaneously referencing the intractable earth and the tragic Shakespearean ﬁgure of Ophelia, who drowned herself, the album itself exhibits more organic sounding instruments with a tone that is not exclusively depressing. Musically, Swamp Ophelia continues the vaguely Celtic and intriguing instrumentation that began with Rites by adding pennywhistle, cello, trumpet, ﬂugelhorn, and accordion adding to the mix—even experimenting with string sections and electric guitar. The album’s single was the incessantly catchy Saliers tune “Least Complicated,” which can be read as a reminiscence of one’s sexual awakening, the moment when she realized as a child that she did not ﬁt in with the rest of the kids on the playground. Lyrics evoke a sense of trying to understand oneself when life and school teach you one thing and your personal experience teaches you another. The song is propelled by her powers of narrative and observation, bongos, other percussion, accordion, and other instruments that expand the texture of their music even further than their previous release. The song peaked at twenty-eight on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. Other standout songs include the dark, six-minute “Touch Me Fall” by Ray, with a muscular electric guitar presence that rivals anything that male-dominated Seattle grunge bands were producing at the time. Another noteworthy track includes the ode to partnership, “Power of Two.” In fact, in his round-up of top albums of 1994, Atlanta Journal-Constitution writer Steve Dollar singles out the Saliers song “Power of Two” as a standout track. Following the release of the stellar Swamp Ophelia and the double live album 1200 Curfews in 1995, the latter of which features covers of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young songs, the Indigo Girls slowed their work pace a bit. Perhaps, after nearly ten years of writing, touring, and recording and releasing a half dozen albums, they were getting tired. Some critics and fans started to feel as though their material was getting a bit stale. Looking at the larger context of the times, however, perhaps the Indigo Girls began to seem less novel, less original, because of the mid- to late 1990s inﬂux of and tremendous success with what became a formula of girlwith-a-guitar. Perhaps, too, the tremendous success of Sarah McLachlan’s women-only touring extravaganza known as Lilith Fair made the playing ﬁeld more heavily populated with female artists. The festival drastically improved the musical landscape for female artists, but its pervasiveness must have lessened the impact the Indigo Girls, even as participants in Lilith, could have on new fans and its ability to retain their older ones. It makes some sense, then, that three years passed between 1994’s Swamp Ophelia and a new studio album release in the form of 1997’s Shaming of the Sun. The album wasn’t as well received by critics as previous efforts because of a slight formulaic feel to the material. Noteworthy songs include the leadoff

Indigo Girls

205

“Shame on You,” which packs in references to religion, immigration, and white middle-class ignorance and In a busy, active, alienating guilt. But even here the religious metaphors become era, it’s a very personal diluted. In the ﬁrst verse, Ray sings, “Let’s go down to alternative. . . . You don’t the riverside and take off our shoes and wash these need to plug it in. You can sins away.” In the chorus, which quickly follows, the just play it anywhere. river becomes personiﬁed and says to those who enter: —Emily Saliers, on using an acoustic guitar “Shame on you.” With banjo and electric guitar, it shows their interest in layering rock and folk instruments— a pleasant move—but like many of the album’s other songs, does not do too much to expand the Indigo Girls’ oeuvre. Despite the critical disappointment, the album itself went to number seven on the Billboard 200 and was certiﬁed gold by August 1997. “Shame on You” peaked at number ﬁfteen on the Billboard Adult Top 40 and number six on the Top 40 Adult Recurrents; it was the only song to appear on the Billboard charts. Come On Now Social was released in 1999, with the appearance of a heavy-hitting and eclectic batch of musicians such as Sheryl Crow, Joan Osbourne, MeShell Ndegéocello, and Natacha Atlas. The album’s sound palette is varied, starting with the rocker song “Go” to open up the experience and then hitting on country, old-style folk, and pop along the way and releasing the pleasant folk-pop single tinged with horns called “Peace Tonight.” Although in All Music Guide Stephen Thomas Erlewine goes so far as to call the album a “fully realized comeback” and it peaked at number twelve on the Top Internet Albums and number thirty-four on the Billboard 200, Come On Now Social has not achieved even gold status. New Label and New Beginning for the New Millennium The songs on 2002’s Become You, their ninth album, are stripped down and closer to their roots than some of their earlier efforts and are a testament to the maturity and comfort of their years working together. Their intention was to pare down their arrangements to create a solid acoustic album, and they succeeded. The songs feel effortless; their production and instrumentation come across as natural and unforced. The album brings us the personal “She’s Saving Me,” written about the death of Saliers’s sister Carrie at the age of twenty-nine from pneumonia; “Hope Alone”; the Ray-penned “Yield”; and the thickly layered vocals of the bluesy “Bitter Root.” “You’ve Got to Show” is a sultry, intimate tune underscored by the warm vibrations of a Fender Rhodes piano and a saxophone solo, with the lyric “There are a thousand things about me I want only you to know/But I can’t go there, you’ve got to show.” In some ways, at least according to Ray, the album beneﬁted from some of the time she spent working on her own solo album Stag, which was released in 2001. Become You is also noteworthy because it represents the ﬁrst time Ray and Saliers actually worked together on songs at Tree Sound

206

Women Icons of Popular Music

Studio in Georgia, thus breaking their historic pattern of writing songs separately and collaborating later. In 2004 they released All That We Let In, which was regarded by critics and fans as one of their best efforts in years and a continuation of the ﬁne return to form of their earlier records. It peaked at thirty-ﬁve on the Billboard 200 and sixty-six on the Billboard Top Internet Albums, and although “Perfect World,” the —Amy Ray quintessential Indigo Girls single—catchy, thoughtful, intriguing use of organic instruments—did not receive high placement on the Billboard charts, it, along with other strong songs such as “Fill it Up Again,” did signal that the Indigo Girls had not run out of ideas yet. A sonic experiment, the Ray-written “Heartache for Everyone” even dips into ska beats. After many years with Epic Records, the Indigo Girls signed a ﬁve-album deal with Hollywood Records. Despite Our Differences, released in September 2006, was produced by Mitchell Froom, who has worked with Suzanne Vega, Elvis Costello, and Paul McCartney, among other prominent artists. The group even invited two artists whose sound diverges signiﬁcantly from their own—outrageous, outspoken pop star Pink and pop songstress Brandi Carlisle—to contribute backing vocals on a few tracks. (The Indigo Girls returned the favor and appeared on Pink’s track “Dear Mr. President” on her album I’m Not Dead.) On the whole, the pair took some musical risks for this album that paid off. As a debut on a new label, too, it only makes sense to try something new, to break away somewhat from previous methods, approaches, and sounds. Regardless of the collaborative involvement of so many accomplished musicians, Despite Our Differences is very much an Indigo Girls record. After nearly twenty years together, the Indigo Girls have become icons of folk rock with a social and spiritual consciousness.

I keep hearing from reporters that women performers are hot items on the music scene at present but we certainly didn’t feel that people were out clamoring for us to sign a recording contract.

MISSION, MOTIVATION, PROCESS The Indigo Girls’ inspirations and backgrounds, musically speaking, are somewhat divergent, although early in their collaboration they bonded over a love of 1960s soul music, Buffalo Springﬁeld records, and Joni Mitchell. Together, though, their songs can be characterized as ﬁrst-person narratives often with a confessional bent. Superﬁcially speaking, they do not seem to be the most obvious pairing of talent but what began as two young girls who liked to sing together has become a formidable creative duo. In retrospect, the spiritual and literary qualities of their songwriting seem preordained. Emily Saliers’s father taught in the school of theology at Emory University, and Amy Ray majored in religion. Saliers was going to be an English teacher before Ray persuaded her to play music together.

Indigo Girls

Together, they count William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Herman Melville, and Toni Morrison as favorite writers. Though their music is not religious, per se—they are less concerned with fear, ﬁre, and brimstone than with redemption, higher powers, and the greater meaning of life—it is hard to deny its inﬂuence and the multitude of universal images and themes it affords their songwriting. Although they perform and record as a duo, Saliers and Ray usually work separately on music. Indeed, they are well known for going their separate ways as soon as the touring or recording processes are over, returning to their individual homes. When it’s time to work on music, they compose independently and come together to collaborate on harmonies, instrumentation, and guitar parts. A careful reader of the Indigo Girls liner notes reveals that the composer nearly always takes the lead vocal on her own songs. Their writing and singing styles are appreciatively different. Ray is more outgoing, Saliers is more introspective, and it works because they willingly merge their differences into their songs. Saliers told Guitar Player magazine in September 1994 that she works out material on her Martin guitar but needs a “quiet space” to get started. “I start collecting these feelings and reaction and responses, and I tuck them away—I don’t really write them down”(Mettler 1994). Saliers said the best time for her is either late morning or early afternoon, by herself, with a cup of coffee. She described the process as mostly spontaneous and does not overanalyze the muse. “Obviously, if I start playing something fast on the guitar, I’m not going to write that sensitive love song that I’ve been holding inside” (Mettler 1994). She also acknowledged that she is inspired often by new things she encounters—people, places, and things. In the Guitar Player interview, she reﬂected on some of the songs that went into Swamp Ophelia and said that she was jogging in Germany and thought about its place in history and how in the not too distant past, nearby countries and cities were enemies, “and people we thought we hated were being killed, but now we’re all very friendly. There just seems to be no absolute truth about conﬂict.” The cycle of history and the repetition of human actions through time, she said, is “very inspiring” (Mettler 1994). Ray, on the other hand, writes whenever she is moved. “I don’t have much discipline. And I don’t know why I write, either. I go by stream-of-consciousness, so whatever pops out is what’s most important to me,” (Mettler 1994) she says, sometimes using an acoustic Martin guitar and other times her Fender electric guitar. She lets her approach to instrumentation and arrangement be somewhat dictated by the song’s feel and message. For instance, when writing “Touch Me Fall,” a six-minute progressive-leaning song, Ray started playing acoustically but then turned to her Fender Stratocaster. “I wanted a gutsy sound. The challenge was to give a tangible feel to my abstract thought [‘Everything is beautiful’] as well as that feeling’s ﬂipside: decomposition,” she explained (Mettler 1994). Although their styles differ, the themes that interest Ray and Saliers unite them, serving as a common starting ground for putting their individual

207

208

Women Icons of Popular Music

perspectives together. Religion and spiritual matters are a constant thread through their music, but the word “religion” is not necessarily synonymous with Christianity, although images of Christianity do often pervade their songwriting. Ray is more oriented in a view of nature than structured Christianity, and Saliers recognizes the merits of various faiths in her worldview. Arguably, it took the Indigo Girls a few albums to develop skills of irony and humor in their process, but those elements do surface every once in a while. Throughout their time together, too, they have become more conﬁdent songwriters, which Ray said has resulted in a more assertive style. As artists, through working together they have developed a ﬂuency with each other and an unwavering sense of purpose. The work they did for some side projects, for example, marked the ﬁrst time they wrote a song together. For instance, they wrote “Blood Quantum,” for the Honor the Earth beneﬁt CD together. Following up such a stellar major label debut could not have been terribly easy for the Indigo Girls. The content on Nomads Indians Saints took the pair a step further in the quest for spiritual enlightenment and redemption that threads through the debut. Their ability to connect meaningfully to their listeners gives them the opportunity to address the delicate issues of life. Ray’s message in one of her standout compositions, “Pushing the Needle Too Far,” is one of caution that entreats the listener to resist giving in to drugs, suicide, and despair. Such an aggressive address to the listener is a product of their cleaner, more focused writing. Over the years, their efforts directly outside the day-to-day dealings of music—their causes—have helped sharpen and shape their perspective and make them better songwriters.

LEGACY AND OTHER INTERESTS Part of what has made the Indigo Girls so successful is their ability to take time off, do other projects, and pursue other interests individually, and then regroup. Amy Ray started her own label, called Daemon Records, based in Decatur, Georgia, in 1990 as a way to contribute to the region and assist the careers of its emerging musicians. It releases records by artists in the Athens and Atlanta scenes. The label’s ﬁrst release came from a band called The Ellen James Society, named after the feminist character in John Irving’s novel The World According to Garp. In the meantime, the label put out albums from Rose Polenzani and Kristen Hall. About a decade passed, however, before Ray released her own album Stag in 2001, a melodic batch of rock-based tunes that allowed her to explore her inner tendencies to write harder-driving songs laced with smart lyrics and strong attitude. The album includes guest appearances by Joan Jett and Kate Schellenbach (drummer for the thenpopular, all-female band Luscious Jackson). In 2005, Ray released a second solo album Prom, whose cover—you guessed it—features a young girl dressed in a billowy prom dress. Then, in fall 2006, Ray released another solo album

Indigo Girls

209

called Live From Knoxville. While Ray owns a label, Saliers, who enjoys cooking a great deal, owns a res- We don’t say to people taurant in Decatur called Watershed, which serves that they necessarily have seasonal, Southern-inspired food. Its cuisine has re- a responsibility to be ceived culinary awards and acclaim on both local and political. . . . Music is such a national levels since 2000. good way to resist. It keeps Over the course of their career together, the Indigo you strong. It has dignity. Girls have donated their time, energy, and music to a —Amy Ray number of causes, especially those close to their own interests. Starting in the beginning of their career, the pair made their political and humanitarian interests clear and was identiﬁed most closely with Greenpeace. However it would take several years before some of these concerns would begin to pervade the usually personal approach of their songs. On Indigo Girls, the liner notes list organizations such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and the Coalition for the Homeless as efforts they support. And as early as 1990, a year after the release of their debut, they started supporting these causes with more than just mentions on paper. Their music appeared on an album called Tame Yourself in honor of the tenth anniversary of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), along with Chrissie Hynde, Howard Jones, and the B-52s. They’ve appeared in countless concerts for causes and folk festivals, from Newport Folk Festival to more unusual events such as “A Gathering of Tribes,” which took place in San Francisco in fall 1990 and featured musicians from all levels of fame. The process of raising awareness about local issues on national levels is not easy, they acknowledge. Throughout their career, they have used their position to call attention to issues that have been important, including making a recording called Jesus Christ Superstar: A Resurrection, whereby the Indigo Girls reinterpret the songs from the rock opera. The album’s proceeds beneﬁted three gun control education groups, including Sarah Brady’s Center to Prevent Handgun Violence. The Indigo Girls released Resurrection on Ray’s label, Daemon Records, and let the charity be chosen by the album’s producer Michael Lorant, who had been the victim of a mugging and shooting. In 1995 they spent time on the “Honor the Earth” tour, which raised about $250,000 and generated correspondence to public ofﬁcials for the grassroots efforts of Native Americans. Concurrent to that, a beneﬁt CD was released called Honor, with tracks from not only the Indigo Girls but Bonnie Raitt, Bruce Cockburn, and more. By 1996, their interests ranged from women’s issues and the environment to the rights of oppressed, disenfranchised groups such as Native Americans. These progressive issues began to make a more regular appearance in their work, prompting the Indigo Girls to describe their music as “acoustic folk rock with angst” (Perkinson 1996). Throughout their career, they have also lent their support to the gay community, marching in gay rights rallies and parades. They have never apologized for being out musicians and have also resisted being pigeonholed or

210

Women Icons of Popular Music

stereotyped, too. In 2000, Ray and Saliers participated in Honor the Earth Tour again, which supports the political advocacy for native people who are supporting and protecting the earth. In fall 2006, their music was featured on a beneﬁt album Safe Haven for the Sexual Minority Youth Resource Center, an organization in Oregon that beneﬁts, educates, and caters to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, queer, and questioning (LGBTQQ) youth. In fall 2006, in support of Despite Our Differences, the Girls played sets at shows in their home state that beneﬁted a musician’s medical expenses and the Georgia Network to End Sexual Assault. On the lighter side of things, the Indigo Girls have also performed onboard cruises organized by Olivia, a travel organization geared toward lesbians.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Indigo Girls. Epic, 1988 Nomads Indians Saints. Epic, 1990 Rites of Passage. Epic, 1992 1200 Curfews. Epic, 1995 Become You. Epic, 2002 Despite Our Differences. Hollywood, 2006

FURTHER READING Advertiser, The. “At Last, the Girls Get a Chance.” (August 24, 1989). Blake, John. “Sharing Musical DNA, Indigo Girl Emily Saliers and Her Father Tell What’s the Same About their Different Styles in Book.” Atlanta Journal-Constitution (December 4, 2004). Christie, Brian. “Indigo Girls Perform Live, Discuss Their Career.” CNN News (April 29, 1994). Dafoe, Chris. “Inside the Sleeve: Indigo Girls Indigo Girls.” Globe and Mail, Toronto, Canada. (August 17, 1989). Devenish, Colin. “Indigo Girls Get Back to Basics: Ray and Saliers True to Acoustic Roots on ‘Become You.’ ” Rolling Stone online (January 16, 2002). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5919110/indigo_girls_get_back_to_ basics. Dollar, Steve. “The Year’s Best Music Rock Albums.” Atlanta Journal-Constitution (December 25, 1994). Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. “Come on Now Social. Review.” All Music Guide. Available online at www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:azfyxqlkldke. Flick, Larry. “Indigo Girls Ponder Popularity; Epic Readies Push for ‘Swamp Ophelia.’ ” Billboard (March 12, 1994). Foyston, John. “Indigo Girls Serve Up Evening of Intelligent, Provocative Music.” The Oregonian (October 29, 1990).

Indigo Girls

Givens, Ron. “The New Kids on the Block: Indigo Girls and Syd Straw Dispense Folk Wisdom.” Newsweek (August 21, 1989). Guterman, Jimmy. “Review of Indigo Girls.” Rolling Stone 551 (May 5, 1989). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/indigogirls/albums/album/92738/review/ 6068072/indigo_girls. Harrington, Richard. “A Tribute to PETA’s Pals.” Washington Post (November 12, 1990). Haymes, Greg. “Duo Dynamics: Complementary Styles Help Indigo Girls Keep Music Fresh.” The Times Union, Albany, NY (March 4, 2004). Holden, Stephen. “Indigo Girls’ Sensibilities.” New York Times (December 10, 1990). Hull, Anne V. “Closer to Fame: Indigo Girls’ Obscure Days are Over.” St. Petersburg Times (September 19, 1989). Indigo Girls ofﬁcial Web site. See www.indigogirls.com. Jenkins, Mark. “Indigo Girls Dye Everything Poetry.” Washington Post (November 23, 1990). Mettler, Mike. “Indigo Girls: The Power of Two.” Guitar Player (September 1994). Morse, Steve. “Music: Acoustic Claims a Piece of the Rock.” Boston Globe (June 4, 1989). Morse, Steve. “Indigo Girls: Strange Fire, Record Review.” Boston Globe (December 7, 1989). Morse, Steve. “Indigo Girls A Team Despite Differences.” Boston Globe (April 26, 1990). Morse, Steve. “The Nonmaterial Indigo Girls: Their Folk-Rock Takes You on a Spiritual Journey.” Boston Globe (December 7, 1990). Morse, Steve. “The Red-Hot Indigo Girls. Music Review.” Boston Globe (December 12, 1990). Morse, Steve. “The Indigo Girls: Taking Stock at 30.” Boston Globe (May 1, 1994). Neuﬁeld, Matt. “Indigo Girls are the Real Thing.” Washington Times (November 22, 1990). Niester, Alan. “Pop Reviews: Protest Recalled with Indigo Girls’ Aggressive Folk.” Globe and Mail, Toronto, Canada. (May 5, 1990). Owens, Thom. “Shaming of the Sun. Review.” All Music Guide. Available online at www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=&sql=10:2ht67ub080jg. Perkinson, Robert. “The Indigo Girls.” The Progressive (December 1996). Popkin, Helen A.S. “Out of the Blue.” St. Petersburg Times (October 5, 1990). Sacks & Co. “The Indigo Girls’ New Album Despite Our Differences Out Now on Hollywood Records.” Press release. (January 11, 2007). Selvin, Joel. “Something Else.” San Francisco Chronicle (September 8, 1990). Selvin, Joel. “Folk-Singing Duo Scores Direct Hit at Berkeley Complex, Lyrics Set to Hard-Driving Guitar.” San Francisco Chronicle (November 2, 1990). Staggs, Jeffrey. “Indigo Girls’ MTV Blues.” Washington Times (June 24, 1994). Sullivan, Jim. “’60s Folk Meets ’90s Folk in Newport.” Boston Globe (August 13, 1990). Tomlinson, Stuart. “Indigo Girls On the Go Rocker, Balladeer Bask In Success of First Album.” The Oregonian (December 1, 1989). Tomlinson, Stuart. “It’s Like Singing With Your Sister.” The Oregonian (October 26, 1990).

211

Courtesy of Photofest

Janis Joplin

214

Women Icons of Popular Music

OVERVIEW

. . . If Joni Mitchell gave me the idea that a woman could write about her life in a public forum, Janis gave me the idea that a woman could live a wild life and put that out there in a public forum, too.

Perhaps more than any other female musician, Janis Joplin’s life and career embody the cliché expression “sex, drugs, and rock and roll,” albeit in a tragic way. Joplin emerged from the blues musical tradition with a style that shows an inﬂuence of the singer Bessie Smith. However, Joplin came of age during the late —Rosanne Cash 1960s, so the inﬂuence took on new life when it merged with women’s burgeoning sexual freedoms of the decade. Janis Joplin became a voice of a generation, but unlike Joan Baez, another artist and singer closely associated with California’s music scene in the 1960s, Joplin was a more emotionally explosive singer and performer. Where Baez was plaintive with her political entreaties through beautiful songs, Joplin infused her singing with a sense of urgency, desperation, pain, and passion that seemed borne out of her need to break out of the good-girl expectations surrounding her upbringing and her community. She rose to stardom as the lead singer for the San Francisco group Big Brother and the Holding Company, but she left this psychedelic rock band in the late 1960s for an inﬂuential solo career that was cut short by years of drug and alcohol abuse that ultimately ended her life. Janis Joplin did much to change the deﬁnition and expand the possibilities of women in rock in the 1960s (see sidebar). She was strong, assertive, honest, and at times sexually frank—she was prone to the kind of indiscreet talk that men are more commonly associated with. Her voice and style bore the inﬂuence of Aretha Franklin, Bessie Smith, Big Mama Thornton, Otis Redding, and Odetta. Although Joplin died young and her personal life was marked by difﬁcult relationships, her career left an incredible impact on the rest of the music business, on artists who discovered her work posthumously, and on popular culture in general. Joplin’s achievements helped make possible the careers of Bonnie Raitt, Sheryl Crow, Joan Osborne, Melissa Etheridge, and Joss Stone—female songwriters and singers who all to some degree fuse blues and rock. Rosanne Cash reﬂected on Joplin’s inﬂuence saying that without Joplin, there would be no Melissa Etheridge, there would be no Chrissie Hynde, no Gwen Stefani, that there would be no one. Her ﬁrst album, I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, reached number twenty-three on the Billboard black albums chart and number four on the Billboard pop albums chart. Its follow-up, Pearl, reached number thirteen in 1971 on the black album chart and number one on the pop albums chart. The posthumous success continued, with Joplin in Concert hitting number four on the pop albums chart in 1972, Janis Joplin’s Greatest Hits hitting thirty-seven on the same chart in 1973, Janis hitting ﬁfty-four in 1975, and ﬁnally Farewell Song peaking at 104 on the pop albums chart in 1982. She is most identiﬁed with the song “Me and Bobby McGee,” which was written by Kris Kristofferson

Janis Joplin

Days of Psychedelia, Days of Folk Music: Three Joplin Contemporaries The late 1960s and early 1970s were an extraordinarily productive time for West Coast–based singers and songwriters, many of whose careers were bolstered by the Monterey Pop Festival, psychedelic drugs, and exploring the boundaries of folk music. The era launched not only Joan Baez and Janis Joplin, but Cass Elliot (Mama Cass), Cher, and Stevie Nicks. Cass started in a folk trio called the Big Three, with Tim Rose and James Hendricks, and after a few underappreciated records, it morphed into the Mugwumps, which included Denny Doherty. He and Elliot would make music history when they joined John and Michelle Phillips in The Mamas and The Papas in 1965. Many critics attribute the group’s success with songs such as “Monday Monday” and “California Dreamin’” to Cass’s warm voice and charismatic personality. In fact, her home in California was reputedly a revolving, welcoming door; people came and went at all hours of the day and night. Before she became known as a pop music diva, Cher’s roots were in folk music with her husband Sonny Bono. The pair recorded several albums together as Sonny and Cher, most notably the 1965 anthem “I Got You Babe.” Her solo career now spans several decades and includes successful turns in films, especially Moonstruck. Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham toured as the band Fritz and opened up for Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and others between 1968 and 1971 before joining Fleetwood Mac in 1974. As a singer in Fleetwood Mac with on-again, off-again boyfriend Buckingham, Nicks’s flowing, mystical attire and husky voice made her a symbol of sexy 1970s singers, one whose name was frequently mentioned alongside Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris.

and went to number one on the pop singles chart in 1971; the song “MercedesBenz,” which in the 1990s was used in a car advertisement on television; and “Get It While You Can,” which hit number seventy-eight in 1971 on the pop singles chart. “Kozmic Blues” hit forty-one on the pop singles charts in 1969, “Cry Baby” reached forty-two in 1971, “Down On Me” hit number ninetyone in 1972, and “One Night Stand,” ten years later, reached thirty-ﬁve on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart. Although Cheap Thrills, released by Columbia, was certiﬁed gold in October 1968, and her debut was certiﬁed gold in December 1969, nearly all of her gold, platinum, and multiplatinum certiﬁcations took place after her death. Pearl was certiﬁed gold in February 1971 and multiplatinum (times three) by 1986. Her next album to achieve gold after Pearl was Joplin in Concert in 1972, and Janis Joplin’s Greatest Hits in 1975. By 2000, Pearl would be platinum four times over, and the aforementioned Greatest Hits, seven times platinum by 1999. Joplin never

215

216

Women Icons of Popular Music

saw much of this success in her lifetime: The bulk of her accolades, album sales, and critical and commercial appreciation came after her death. She did not receive any Grammy Awards. One can only speculate about the shape her career might have taken had she not passed away at such a young age. In addition to the legacy she left with her own musical style, Joplin unintentionally became a new type of role model for women in the late 1960s—one who was real, ﬂawed, but nonetheless attractive. Joplin literally did not feel comfortable in her own skin—she often felt that her excess weight, her wavy, thick hair, and her troublesome skin were liabilities in an era of thin, straight, long-haired women. Additionally, her own contemporaries, from Grace Slick, the singer for Jefferson Airplane who was a former model, to the tiny and angelic Joan Baez, were traditionally more feminine than Joplin. But she formed her own style by wearing long ﬂowing shirts and somewhat ﬂamboyant beaded tops and boots. Once she started to perform, though, she infused her performance with a raw eroticism that created an unorthodox stage presence for a woman in the mid- to late 1960s. Joplin challenged boundaries, including sexuality; she was open about relationships she had with men and women, including a long-term, off-and-on relation with a woman named Peggy Caserta. In addition to winning fans and gaining attention, especially in the early days with Big Brother, Joplin’s ferocious, passionate persona onstage caught the attention of Jim Morrison, Joe McDonald, Kris Kristofferson, Jimi Hendrix, and oddly, Joe Namath, who were all men she is rumored to have slept with.

EARLY YEARS Joplin grew up in the small conservative oil reﬁnery town of Port Arthur, Texas, situated in the southeastern corner of the state. At the time that she was growing up, it was a pleasant place to raise a child, and the community was a mix of Mexicans, African Americans, and Cajuns from Louisiana. Her father, Seth, was educated at Texas A&M and moved from Amarillo to Port Arthur to work for Texaco as an engineer. Joplin referred to her father as a “secret intellectual.” Her mother, Dorothy, originally came from Nebraska and was the daughter of a cattle rancher turned farmer turned salesman. Joplin’s mother was described as industrious and disciplined—a woman with an aggressive temperament and an unwavering decisiveness along with her very shrewd intelligence. As a young child, her parents said that she did not necessarily behave in a way that suggested she craved the spotlight. She sang in choir and glee club but she was not really aware of any musical talent. In fact, Joplin was mostly interested in art, and as soon as she could hold a pencil she started drawing. Her parents arranged for art lessons by the time she was in third or fourth grade. She also enjoyed reading, and her mother said she was a storyteller. When she was six, her mother gave birth to Laura, her younger

Janis Joplin

sister, and to brother Michael when Janis was ten. Although she loved her siblings, her mother said that Janis seemed to need more attention than they did, and if she did not receive it, she grew unhappy. She also pushed herself to be a high achiever. Overall, she was well-liked by her community; she seemed like a bright, well-adjusted, helpful child. When she got to high school, Joplin started to form her own opinions, including her proclamation in ninth grade that she approved of integration—a bold statement unheard of in that part of the world. It was the beginning of her departure from the innocent, demure, and shy girl of the South and her transformation into a strong-willed, independent young woman. Through most of high school Joplin’s grades were high, and she was smart, imaginative, and at times challenging. Her mother wanted her to conform and wished for social approval for her daughter. Her friend Karleen Bennett recalls an incident in which Joplin painted a nude silhouette on her closet door, and her mother forced her to cover up the image. Her teenage years got even more difﬁcult as high school progressed, as her adolescent chubbiness gave way to weight gain, and her skin became plagued with acne. She became extremely self-conscious, and her talent and intelligence did not make up for those perceived shortcomings in the conservative small town of Port Arthur. She became friendly with a handful of boys who were starting to rebel against the strictures of the small town by drinking, rabble rousing, and partaking in general juvenile delinquency—nothing terribly harmful or illegal. Her new male friends applauded her for her ability to blend in as “one of the guys” and engage in loud, crude talk as they were wont to do. By the time she was a senior in high school, even with the boys as a buffer, she was mocked and made fun of. Her unconventional style of dress raised eyebrows. Her friend Karleen said Joplin often acted as though she did not care what people thought of her, but deep down she just wanted to be accepted and really did want the approval. At the suggestion of her mother, Joplin took a drafting class, thinking it would help her with her painting skills, but she was the only girl in the class. People assumed her afﬁliation was sexual and began saying that she was chasing the boys. But her difﬁculty with her parents and her friends really crystallized after she deﬁed her parents and went to New Orleans one evening—she told her parents she was at Karleen’s—with a bunch of friends. They hung out at jazz joints and on the way home got into an accident. Joplin’s hometown consisted mostly of Baptists and Catholics with strong ideas about how teenagers ought to behave. Joplin needed attention, and even negative attention was acceptable. Because she hung out with mostly boys and not girls, she started to develop a negative reputation in her conservative town. Her outlandish behavior and her inﬂated and mostly false claims of sexual exploits gave people the idea that she was loose or wild, but Joplin was actually a smart, creative teenager who felt trapped, which led to restlessness.

217

218

Women Icons of Popular Music

Somehow, though, she found refuge in music. Despite her intelligence, she stopped going to school periodi—Big Mama Thornton cally because socially it was so unpleasant. She spent time at the local coffee shop, Pasea’s, where she displayed and sold some of her paintings. But during this time, too, she had been listening to jazz; Joplin was inﬂuenced by the beat generation and jazz, despite the fact that she was a teenager growing up in the age of The Beatles and Beach Boys. Joplin started singing along with her records around her sophomore year in high school. Musically speaking, as a teenager she sang with folk rock groups, playing sometimes with future Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen. Early videos of her performances show that she had started to develop her own style even before she became a part of Big Brother and the Holding Company. At home Joplin would listen to records by Odetta, Bessie Smith, and Willie Mae Thornton and imitate what she heard—her ability to do so was uncanny. Slowly, though, she started to develop her own phrasing, her own inﬂections. After graduating from high school, her parents were grateful that she agreed to enroll at nearby Lamar State College of Technology in Beaumont, but it didn’t have a much better or more open atmosphere than her high school. She studied for about a year, but during that time, there was an incident in which she ran off to Houston, became extremely intoxicated, and wound up in the hospital with a kidney infection. Psychiatric and psychological counseling also resulted from the event. According to biographer Myra Friedman’s account, it seems as though her parents really were not sure what to do about her, or for her, or with her. For a brief period, her mother sent her to live with her sister in Los Angeles. Joplin got a job and moved out to her own place in Venice, where the beatniks were. The experience changed her; she returned to Texas shortly thereafter and tried to convert the middle-class suburban friends she made into hippies too. It helped provide her with an identity. During that year, she had started to sing, beginning with a performance at a Beaumont Club. Initially, she was not met with much of a response, positive or negative, but it did not stop her. Joplin started to sing at the Half-Way House in Beaumont and the Purple Onion in Houston—the same place where she’d lost control of herself. That summer, too, she sang for a bank commercial, set to the tune of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land,” swapping out the word “land” for “bank.” It was the ﬁrst recording she made. Joplin returned to Lamar in spring of that year and performed well. She lost weight, started wearing make-up, and worked as a waitress. If she wasn’t working, she was out with her friend Jack Smith at the beach or dancing. Things were normal and placid for a while, but gradually beer turned to bourbon, and the swimming and lounging at night on the beach turned to driving the car into the water. Finally, she and Jack started going back to Louisiana for the bars, and her personality swung back out of control. She and a handful of her friends somehow ended up in Austin by the summer of 1962, speciﬁcally

That girl feels like I do.

Janis Joplin

to the University of Texas-Austin. A group of tenement houses called “the ghetto” quickly became her home; it was the center of the Beat scene, too. The music scene of the Beats in Austin revolved around country and blues; the mainstream people on campus were listening to folk music. Joplin started singing around campus with friends Powell St. John and Lanny Wigins, and they called themselves the Waller Creek Boys. Austin was more important to her career than her life as a student, because she met Kenneth Threadgill, country music singer and proprietor of a place called Threadgill’s, a hangout and music spot converted from a gas station. He encouraged her efforts and became her friend. The trio performed there and on campus regularly and she enrolled at University of Texas-Austin as an art student. She was still a wild child, still saying outlandish provocative things to get attention, and still starting trouble. Mostly, she drank a lot, but she did not take psychedelic drugs at this time nor did she smoke pot—her friends recalled her taking Seconal and said she would “run crazy. She’d walk the streets at night and try to get run over and run into buildings with her head” (Friedman 1973, 41). Despite the fact that she had a close group of friends and was starting to perform, the community at large in Austin, on campus and off, did not approve of her. Finally, she reached a turning point when she was rated “Ugliest Man on Campus.” She left campus one night in January after performing at Threadgill’s. Her parents tried to ﬁnd her, but it was too late. She had already taken off for San Francisco.

CAREER PATH Still entranced with beatnik and then hippie subculture, Joplin was destined for San Francisco. After hitchhiking from Texas to California she arrived with her friend Chet Helms, ﬁlthy and broke. Undaunted, the ﬁrst night Joplin performed at Coffee and Confusion in the North Beach area, which was home to City Lights Bookshop and other beatnik haunts. The small crowd assembled there loved her and she went home with $14. She worked odd jobs and lived on the dole, her parents and friends said, and sang. San Francisco was undergoing a transition between the end of the beat era and the beginning of the hippie era. Regardless, she was at home; in San Francisco, no one thought her grubby attire, loud demeanor, or free, live-and-let-live attitude was unusual. She started smoking dope, which she’d previously eschewed in Austin, and doing speed. Some other friends contend in the early days of her life in San Francisco she was also doing heroin. Joplin spent 1963 to 1965 in the San Francisco area and developed a strong, devoted following. But she continued to be misunderstood and receive abuse from other people; one evening, she had a violent run-in with a rough crowd in a back alley; another night, she got into a motorcycle accident. Her relations with men were similarly difﬁcult. She moved to New York and stayed on

219

220

Women Icons of Popular Music

the Lower East Side, playing at a place called Slug’s. Somehow, her parents became convinced that her career was starting to take shape, but Joplin didn’t stay there long and was back in San Francisco by fall 1964. When she returned, she started dealing drugs, mainly speed, which, in addition to her performances on stage, was yet another path to social acceptance. Unfortunately, the loose, laid back culture of 1960s San Francisco appealed to her too, as she had easy —Jim Langdon access to drugs and alcohol. By the middle of 1965 she tried to have herself committed to the San Francisco General Hospital. It did not work. She was dating a man whose drug habits were not too dissimilar from her own, although he was in much better physical shape than she was. Eventually, though, the hedonistic lifestyle took its toll on her. Wasted to eighty-eight pounds, Joplin was sent home to her parents by her concerned friends and her boyfriend at the time, himself a speed user. She also went home because she was supposed to be getting married to her boyfriend. Joplin returned to school, wore practical clothing that covered up the track marks on her arms, and attained some level of conformity and stability for about ten months. She wanted to stay off drugs and did not like the edginess and anxiety that it brought her; she talked often of doing “the right thing.” Unfortunately, her boyfriend deserted her, so there was no marriage. While she was living in Texas during this time, Joplin kept singing, making trips to Austin to appear at a club called the Eleventh. By 1966, she was able to identify becoming a singer as her chief aspiration but was afraid that the choice would also mean a return to her previously unstable lifestyle. As she was planning to move to Austin, her friend Chet Helms, who was still in San Francisco, contacted her through a mutual friend and expressed that they wanted her to audition for a band called Big Brother and the Holding Company, whom he was managing. She was only twenty-three years old; it was May 1966. At the time, Joplin kept telling reporters she joined the band not because she was ambitious about her singing career but because of sex. To some extent, that line was a cover—it was hard for her to admit to her ambitions. Joplin moved back to California and joined the group. In general, she was met with surprise from her audience—surprise that a white woman could sing the blues like she did. When she ﬁrst arrived, band members were expecting someone more glamorous, rather than the overweight girl with bad skin and rough, mannish clothing. Early rehearsals with Big Brother before performances indicated to her that she needed to sing loud in front of a rock band. There is inherent irony, though, because she was not even initially brought on to be the band’s lead singer, but her larger-than-life personality soon demonstrated that she should serve as nothing but just that. Big Brother and the Holding Company

She had a large ego to gratify. She certainly sought and needed other people’s acceptance, but she was very definitely an independent person. There was nobody else controlling her destiny, that’s for sure.

Janis Joplin

tended to play sloppily, and although that style had its appeal critics noticed that Joplin elevated the music to another level. This progression wasn’t always recognized, however, because members of the band sometimes remarked that they received complaints about how “terrible” she was—her Texas country rock was a bit at odds with the band’s idea of a rock sound. Nevertheless, somehow the band could not help but be transformed by her presence, and Joplin had discovered a joyous, bluesy band to help her ﬁnd her voice. Ultimately, despite the fact that Joplin had been clean for about a year, San Francisco’s culture started to affect her again, along with the crowd she was hanging out with. Soon, drinking at pool halls with the Grateful Dead turned into doing speed again and then acid with Big Brother, although reports seem to suggest she was not aware it was acid at the time and that overall she stayed away from that drug. Around this time, San Francisco’s young population was shifting from beatniks, who wanted to create an alternative to mainstream American culture, toward hippies, whose primary concern was reactive: dropping out of and escaping from mainstream culture. The growing tension between the two was something Joplin experienced; no doubt the hippies’ preferences toward LSD, heroin, and marijuana were all around her. Indeed, even the band’s name reﬂected the transition from beatniks to hippies: The “big brother” part was a cynical beatnik reference to George Orwell’s classic novel 1984 but the latter half referred to the slang expression “are you holding” as in “are you carrying marijuana?” Joplin lived with the band in a house north of San Francisco, down the street from the Grateful Dead, in which she found a community that was deeply interested in expanding its mind through music, drugs, and intellectual dialogue.

From Big Brother to Solo Career The band had a self-titled debut on the Mainstream Label, which came out in 1967. Joplin only appeared on a few tracks singing lead; in others, she is relegated to the background. Her standout tracks include “Bye, Bye Baby” and “Down on Me.” To say that Joplin’s addition to Big Brother was an asset is an understatement; many critics agree she was the most engaging part of it. When the band played at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival she sang the Big Mama Thornton song “Ball and Chain” and captivated the audience. Cass Elliot of The Mamas and The Papas recalled watching Joplin’s performance, stunned (Jackson 2005, 219). Joplin’s signature whisper-to-a-howling-scream of a vocal approach surprised many. Her body shook, quivered, her hair swung around; Joplin looked as though she were possessed by some force greater than herself. The performance, though, was no act; she was quick to say that singing was liberating for her. Because of her conﬁdent onstage persona, reporters were often caught off guard by her offstage demeanor, when her insecurities

221

222

Women Icons of Popular Music

revealed themselves. Some felt protective, but others were alarmed by how needy she could be. The misery and power she portrayed on stage dissolved between performances but her genius was still evident. Joplin herself acknowledged that it was her vulnerability that allowed her to connect with audiences. Her performances were cathartic, startling, and provided a strong, immediate bond for fans who were attracted to her self-destructiveness. But her onstage personality also diverted much of the attention away from the rest of the band members, who were all male and who did not enjoy their newfound invisibility. After Monterey, interviewers all wanted to talk to Joplin, who was none too happy to comply with their requests, albeit with a manipulative twist that showed she wanted to retain the upper hand in her image creation. Joplin perceived it as an opportunity to concoct shocking sound bites and racy details about her life. Regardless of the veracity of her stories, Joplin had the press wrapped around her ﬁnger; she made for good copy. The success of their live performance and the presence of Joplin in the band helped the band sign a deal with Albert Grossman to manage them in early 1968. He set them up with gigs up and down the East Coast. Big Brother made its stunning, successful New York debut in February 1968. B.B. King opened for them as his ﬁrst performance for a white audience in downtown Manhattan. The acid rock, Cheap Thrills, came out in 1968 and topped the charts, which helped elevate Joplin to star status. Cheap Thrills was the band’s ﬁrst album for Columbia Records and was the ofﬁcial commercial breakthrough for the band. The recording process was fraught with difﬁculty because at its heart Big Brother was a gritty, sloppy garage band. Joplin suggested they record it live, since their live energy was compelling. The idea didn’t work— the tapes were a disaster, the audience unresponsive—so they went back to recording in the studio. There, Joplin poured her passion into the sessions and sang her heart out, but the band members remained cool and unﬂappable. They were in one place, which was laid back and usually out of tune, and she was in another, taking the process much more seriously. Eventually, the studio was turned into a makeshift live environment, so the band could play its parts together at the same time, which was more successful. The band wanted to create a record that made people dance, but Joplin, caught between the band’s idea and producer John Simon’s desires to put together something in tune and in time, was frustrated. Joplin did her best to rise above the noise, most notably on “Piece of My Heart,” but also as part of a simmering exercise in restraint, a cover of the classic George and Ira Gershwin song “Summertime.” Unsurprisingly, both tracks were singles for the album. The success came despite the fact that the band was paired with an unlikely producer, John Simon, a man with exacting musical standards and a background

If you can get them once, man . . . I think you sort of switch on their brain. . . . Whoooooo! It’s life. That’s what rock ‘n’ roll is for.

Janis Joplin

in jazz. Rolling Stone expressed disappointment at the inherent sloppiness of the band even under the guidance of one of the best producers in the business. Other critics were much more generous in their assessment by acknowledging that the band’s energy made up for the lack of musicianship. Regardless of what the critics thought and whatever perceived missteps were taken in the record’s production, Cheap Thrills quickly shot up to the number one slot and went gold within just a couple of months of its release. “Piece of My Heart” became a Top 40 hit. At this point, the band was billed as “Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company.” Shortly after the album’s release, Grossman, who was managing Peter, Paul and Mary and Bob Dylan at the time, encouraged Joplin’s solo career and suggested she leave the band. At this point, Joplin was unhappy—the tension in the band was high, and the press had disparaged Big Brother while reserving most of its praise for her. She was ambitious, but her bandmates were overcome with inertia. The decision tormented her, but once she reached it, she actively courted success. There were other elements, though—speciﬁcally the collective toll that drugs took on the band members. As Joplin’s sister Laura explained, with their newfound income from music, drug use went up and relationships and performances suffered. During Christmas 1968, Janis Joplin and Big Brother played its last gig as a group. So Joplin looked for a better, blues-oriented backup band, one with a seasoned horn section like those who backed Aretha Franklin or Otis Redding. By this stage in her career, Joplin had the undivided attention of the media, which had latched onto her every word and lauded the power with which she claimed the rough side of rock and roll for herself. The only women prior to Joplin who had sung in this way were African American. Although pursuing life as a solo artist meant losing the support of her surrogate family in San Francisco, Joplin forged ahead. In hindsight it seems a foregone conclusion that she would leave the band, but she faced some challenges and some backlash from fans—hippies thought she was selling out, and Joplin herself was ﬁnding it difﬁcult to be a woman out on her own, even in the late 1960s. She continued to give the public the persona that made her famous and continued to hide her native intelligence. Her paranoia about her image and her looks continued unabated as did her use of alcohol. By summer 1968, six months before she left the band, she started using heroin more regularly. Life on the road was taking its toll, but there was a certain self-destructive romance to heroin, because artists such as Billie Holiday had used the drug. There was a belief that it was a path to musical greatness. Joplin, though, was excited by the prospect of working on her own. Getting musicians together and convincing them to stay with her during the touring and recording process was tricky once again; visions and ideas clashed between Joplin and producer Gabriel Mekler, who had previously worked with Steppenwolf but not any soul bands. Drug use was commonplace among Joplin and some of her band members and was enough to be disruptive to the recording

223

224

Women Icons of Popular Music

and touring processes. Her ﬁrst album, I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, featured some of the musicians from Big Brother, including guitarist Sam Andrew, but the group heavily featured horns, too. It was released in September 1969 with only eight tracks; she did a take on the Rodgers and Hart song “Little Girl Blue,” wrote the song “One Good Man,” and co-wrote “Kozmic Blues” with organist-producer Mekler. The title of the album refers to what she felt was the universality of the blues—Joplin did not feel it was a race-speciﬁc state of mind. Although she was brought up white and middleclass and the blues was acknowledged as the music for those dealing with hard times, Joplin distinguished her brand of blues as something more existential that is felt in the gut. The overall sound of the band was a bit more accomplished and put-together than the shambolic jam rock of Big Brother, but the music itself, a soulful rock, was a new embellishment for her singing. The group played together for months before the album was released—Grossman advised her to not waste any time after her departure. The album was not the biggest success but it did contain her most well-known songs, a take on the Jerry Ragovoy’s “Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)” and a cover of the Bee Gees’ “To Love Someone.” At the time of its release, though, Kozmic Blues was not critically hailed, rather it was considered a letdown because it was rough around the edges and showed growing pains because of Joplin’s shift in style to a more soulful rock. The band overshadows Joplin’s voice in many cases but does so without making up for it with any inspired playing. However, it is more than worth wading through the murky playing because of Joplin’s voice. The album received mixed reviews in the United States but better press in Europe; British audiences liked her, and troops stationed in Germany could not wait for her to come and perform for them. Still, in retrospect it is really surprising that a woman who had received so much in the way of accolades had such a tricky time getting decent, consistent producers and competent, smart musicians to back her. It is almost as if on Kozmic Blues, her band is simply not worthy of her, continuing a trend from her Big Brother days, but it is more likely that timing and her insecurity regarding her own musical talent hindered her—it was not easy for her to be around more competent musicians. And her voice proved difﬁcult to match to any particular genre. If one can remove her debut from that immediate historical context and think of the album as the beginning of the career of a woman who was experimenting with her voice and doing something that was relatively new for the time, one is better able to appreciate its accomplishments and its ﬂaws. For example, the record is heavy on horn arrangements, and although Joplin’s voice may become too harsh at times, many critics believe that on this album she has achieved a stylistic balance between pure blues and soul. Part of the issue, it seems, is that it is hard to capture her essence in the studio. Consequently, her live performances—even those recorded—are signiﬁcantly better. It is worth watching the Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music documentary

Janis Joplin

directed by Michael Wadleigh just for Joplin’s performance of the traditional gospel song “Work Me Lord.” Joplin is positively electric. In fact, the strength of her live performance sums up the whole genesis and, some might argue, the point of her career itself, because Joplin had a parasitic relationship to her audience. Then again, the point of much of the music produced in San Francisco in the late 1960s, whether it was Big Brother, the Grateful Dead, or Country Joe and the Fish, was just to play it for other people to enjoy. Spontaneity and experience were more important than studied attention to music theory and the mantra of practice-makes-perfect. Many of the recordings from these bands around the time suffer from such inconsistencies. Nevertheless, the album went gold, but it fell short of generating any Top 10 singles. There is a sense that she hoped fame would bring her some inner peace. Unfortunately, the path to fame was littered with Southern Comfort, heroin, bisexual experimentation (mostly with longtime companion Peggy Caserta), constant work, and the need to regularly work her audiences into a near-riot stage. By spring 1969—well before her debut record released—Joplin was obviously on her way to self destruction. She had a serious overdose in March 1969, but luckily her friends revived her. In early 1970, she took Dolophine to try to kick her habit and was under the care of a physician. She went to Brazil for ﬁve weeks and declared that she was clean, but when she returned, she quickly started up again. The cycle continued, on and off, for months. By 1970, Joplin had three albums behind her, stellar performances at the watershed festivals at Monterey and Woodstock, an appearance on the cover of Newsweek magazine, and countless newspaper and magazine articles devoted to her. Joplin even turned up as a guest on the Dick Cavett Show just before her ten-year high school reunion. All of this public acceptance should have made her appearance at the reunion go smoothly—she even brought some of her San Francisco contingent along to help deﬂect any potential trouble. Her younger sister Laura was there, and Joplin hoped her presence was supportive, but Laura told the press that her parents had lost two of Joplin’s records and had not replaced them. Joplin held a pre-reunion press conference, during which she came close to crying several times. Dressed in many layers of colorful clothing and oversized glasses, she looked like a California freak to her conservative hometown. Her entourage behaved badly, and her parents felt embarrassed; Joplin and her mother came to blows and there are uncorroborated reports that her mother suggested that she wished Janis had never been born. Joplin was crushed. But even after this experience, she changed her will so that half of her estate went to her parents and a quarter each to her brother Michael and sister Laura. There is some evidence that by spring 1970 she was trying to take more responsibility for her career and had cut back on drinking. When she returned from her reunion, she started to work on the next album, which was recorded with a collection of musicians, some with whom she had worked previously, who took on the name the Full Tilt Boogie Band. Finally, Joplin had a band

225

226

Women Icons of Popular Music

that was not only versatile but that existed to serve her vision. Joplin was excited, looking forward to making more money, taking control of her career, maybe even having a baby with boyfriend-turned-ﬁancé Seth Morgan. But as time passed he seemed less interested in her and more interested in her money. The album was titled Pearl—the nickname her friends in San Francisco used for her so they would not have to call her Janis Joplin, her public, famous name. Produced by Paul Rothchild, known for his expert work with the Doors, Pearl was released in early 1971, four months after her death. He was the ﬁrst producer to be able to really work with Joplin. She died only three weeks after Jimi Hendrix, who had choked to death after taking an overdose of sleeping pills. Joplin died in a Los Angeles motel on October 5, 1970, of an overdose of heroin and alcohol. Some, such as her sister, have insisted that her death was accidental, that Joplin had taken a very pure dose. Although Joplin was sometimes criticized for screaming and screeching and neglecting subtlety, it was not in her nature to be demure or quiet. Pearl, though, showed that she could ably and equally handle rock, blues, and soul music. It wound up becoming her signature record and a tragic promise of what she could have achieved had she lived. The album gave listeners the classic Joplin songs such as the goofy, tongue-in-cheek ode to consumption “Mercedes Benz,” a take on Howard Tate’s soul ballad “Get it While You Can,” and her own attention-grabbing composition “Move Over” as the opening track. Most notably, though, Pearl included the Kris Kristofferson–penned “Me and Bobby McGee,” for which she perhaps is most known and which became a number one single in 1971. She covered it in a live performance, just accompanying herself on acoustic guitar, while touring before the album was released. Sadly, it was the beginning and end of her foray into her country roots. Although the song had been recorded by Roger Miller, most music did not cross over at the time into other audiences, so when she sang it, to her audience the song was a new sound. One of the more poignant moments of the album, though, is “Buried Alive in the Blues,” an apt metaphor for her relationship to her career, perhaps. There were no vocals for the track, so the instrumental, absent her signature voice, feels like a tribute or an oddly rousing elegy.

Fame After Death After Joplin died, her music helped keep her name alive and gain her new fans. To date, Pearl has gone platinum four times and Cheap Thrills triple platinum, but Janis Joplin’s Greatest Hits beats them all, coming in at seven times platinum. The album Joplin in Concert, in addition to recording her live performances, warts and all, also makes plain the fact that Joplin was starting to fall apart. It includes a number of memorable performances, including “Piece of My Heart” and “Kozmic Blues,” going back to some of her work with Big

Janis Joplin

Brother and ending just a couple of months before her death, especially in her take of “Ball and Chain.” The album is difﬁcult to listen to in places when, for instance, Joplin rambles about how things have started to fall apart and the cruelty of life. Even though the audience cheers, the pain and despair in her voice is gut-wrenching. Listening to it now, with the knowledge of her life’s tragic end, gives one the chills. Much of her music, in hindsight, becomes an unsettling portent. Among the other posthumous releases is Janis Joplin’s Greatest Hits (1973), a spare collection of twelve tracks including a couple of tunes she sang with Big Brother and the Holding Company. It gives listeners a fairly thorough representation of Joplin’s art as well as a sense of her ﬁnest moments. Essential Janis Joplin, has a bigger gamut of material, with eighteen tracks, but does not contain, for example, the original recording of “Me and Bobby McGee.” The longer 18 Essential Songs was released in 1995. But fans who seek a comprehensive catalog of Joplin’s work should look into the three-CD boxed set Janis, released in 1993, which contains songs with and without Big Brother, including early material such as “What Good Can Drinkin’ Do” along with an acoustic demo of “Me and Bobby McGee” and an eight-minute version of “Ball and Chain” from Big Brother’s ﬁrst set at Monterey Pop Festival. This boxed set provides listeners with a comprehensive overview of her career and a healthy dose of extras and rarities. Subsequent to Joplin’s death, her work developed a cult following among those who emerged from the scene and women and men who felt underrepresented among her generation. Fans reacted strongly to her loss because they felt that she was just like them; the outcast who never went to the prom in high school or was asked to participate in anything. She became a warning, though, to those who grew up in the so-called Age of Aquarius who, like her, partied and lived hard. It is poignant that none of them seemed surprised by her death. Critics, however, mourned in their obituaries for Joplin about the needless loss caused by abuse of chemicals by the disenfranchised whose pain was ignored by society.

MISSION, MOTIVATION, PROCESS Joplin was not a participant in the acts of racial hatred that many of her peers in Port Arthur perpetuated; instead, she believed in racial equality. When she was in high school, her friends were mostly male who introduced her to blues and jazz, which was risqué and looked down on in her small town because it was practiced by and listened to mostly by African American people. Her musical preferences fed her already growing discontent with her small town— Joplin had already gotten in trouble in school, for example, for speaking up in class in favor of integration. The experience helped her form a sense of her own intelligence and exposed her to music that spoke to her. Her younger

227

228

Women Icons of Popular Music

sister, Laura Joplin, described Janis’s experience with her friends: “They took music very seriously . . . they would have a party and would lie down on the ﬂoor with their eyes shut, then someone would put on a cut and they would try to identify it” (Jackson 2005, 206). These friends exposed her to a form of music more expressive than the sterile 1960s pop that permeated the “cheerleader culture” of her hometown. Part of that music was Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter and Bessie Smith, who Joplin considered honest artists and who she preferred to whatever she heard on the radio. Additionally, in the early days, Joplin mimicked Bessie Smith and sang a lot of her songs, but not simply as an exercise in blind adulation. For Joplin, it meant that she was consciously turning her choirgirl soprano into a much more throaty, dusky wail of a voice. Joplin learned from Smith that you could sing not only with some kind of proﬁciency but that you could sing from the heart as well. Joplin wanted to be tough, but in truth, she was hurting, so the tough-but-tender persona of the blues suited her. For most of her career, she operated with this approach; at ﬁrst she was self-conscious and answered a lot of questions about it, but as her career started to develop momentum, in particular in her days with Big Brother, she began to internalize the process of mimicking and turn it into her own style. Joplin knew her limitations, knew what people were saying about her style, not to mention the political ramiﬁcations of a white woman singing like a black woman. In the recording sessions for the Big Brother album Cheap Thrills, Joplin was criticized by producer John Simon for being too studied because she planned where to place a moan, a wail, or a shriek and was thus not spontaneous. Other producers thought her approach was shrewd because she thoughtfully laid out her interpretation of a song to its most powerful emotional impact. Joplin is not typically identiﬁed as a songwriter—indeed, she is more known for her performances and the imprimatur she has placed on every song she covered—but one song she did write while in Port Arthur was the autobiographical “Turtle Blues,” which ﬁrst appears on Cheap Thrills in which she sings about acting tough but knowing she’s not. Another song she wrote early in her life, “What Good Can Drinkin’ Do,” also contains autobiographical elements—it shows how fruitless it is to drink away your problems. This song appears on the boxed set Janis and is believed to be the ﬁrst time her singing was recorded. Prior to her making it with Big Brother and the Holding Company and then on her own, Joplin spent much of her time denying her own ambition. In many ways, it is easy to see how her difﬁcult childhood in a conservative town, her intelligence that she generally hid, and her insecurities dovetailed to create a troubled young woman, but such an assessment oversimpliﬁes her life. Joplin’s desire for attention was something that drove her into many liaisons—men and women, sexual and platonic—and fueled her toward periods of addiction to drugs, although alcohol was almost always a presence in

Janis Joplin

229

her social life. But such a cursory judgment discounts the real artistic impact she has made on the world of She had an unshakable rock and roll. It also does not account for her under- commitment to her own truth, standing of social equality, her beliefs about racial no matter how destructive, injustice, and her unusual afﬁnity for the material how weird or how bad. This that makes up the blues. Joplin’s honesty in her was a full-blown one-of-amusic has been one of her greatest assets; she was kind woman—no stylist, no not afraid to experience life and show her feelings. publicist, no image-maker. It She said that she was not trying to be the next Bessie was just Janis. Smith: Her feeling was that culturally speaking, African —Rosanne Cash American people were permitted to and indeed needed to express their hardships through singing and that white people generally did not permit themselves such honesty, because, racial issues aside, it is difﬁcult and painful.

LEGACY AND OTHER INTERESTS Joplin’s legacy lives on through the countless female musicians she inspired, and in the stories, books, ﬁlms, and theater works about her life and her music. For example, the 1979 ﬁlm The Rose starring Bette Midler is a loose adaptation of her life story but is true to her on-stage presence, its power, and her subsequent off-stage weaknesses. What is perhaps most consistently examined by scholars, critics, and fans is the fact that Joplin’s music became so much more immensely popular after her death; her story took on the form of a myth. She is one of many artists from that era who died before the age of thirty, along with Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix, other musicians from the 1960s whose lives were a heady mix of addiction, rock and roll, fame, and emotional fragility. Joplin’s career eerily reﬂects that of one of her idols, Bessie Smith, whose career was also marred by alcohol and drugs. Joplin was compared to Elvis Presley, James Dean, and Sylvia Plath. Some critics believe that Joplin was rock and roll’s ﬁrst martyr. Such thinking tends to reduce her to a cautionary tale and overlook her contributions; Joplin was, however, the ﬁrst signiﬁcant female musician of the rock and roll era to meet such a tragic end But if Joplin was the ﬁrst martyr among female rock musicians, she may also have been the ﬁrst truly signiﬁcant and willing female sex symbol. Despite any perceived weaknesses or shortcomings or inability to look like a stereotypical, mainstream beauty of the late 1960s, the type of a woman whose shoes and purses almost certainly matched and whose hair was certainly not wild and unkempt, Joplin became an unlikely and new kind of sex symbol. Her personality—strong and uncompromising—and her attire, wild even by the standards of Haight-Ashbury, somehow made her attractive. In 1967,

230

Women Icons of Popular Music

San Francisco photographer Bob Seidemann created a poster from his portrait of her clothed only in love beads. It made her an unlikely pin-up in Haight—B.B. King Ashbury but a pin-up nonetheless. It also upset her family considerably, who by this time in her career could not understand her life. Her onstage persona was probably more responsible for their discomfort than anything she did offstage or on a record. Her performances could create a frenzy: Women would faint, and men would jump onstage to kiss her. Outside that world, Joplin was still considered freakish, but most of mainstream America considered hippies freaks anyway. Her hometown, though, never forgot her, even if at times the conservative town did not understand her. Her parents often received threatening and obscene phone calls during Joplin’s time as a singer, and after her death, they received phone calls of laughter. Still, in 1988, about 5000 residents sang “Me and Bobby McGee” as a bust of Janis Joplin was revealed, which now sits in the Port Arthur Library. Joplin’s life and the Austin, Texas music scene have been the subject of a documentary called Janis Joplin Slept Here (1994) by Tara Veneruso. In 2006–2007, a biographical musical was mounted called Love, Janis, that combined her music, musings, and life story as inspired by the book her sister Laura Joplin wrote of the same title. The musical, when performed by the Kansas City Repertory Theatre, set box ofﬁce records in Kansas City. The success of the ﬁlms Ray about Ray Charles and Walk the Line about Johnny and June Carter Cash, which were produced in 2004 and 2005, respectively, and each winners of Academy Awards, gave director Penelope Spheeris the idea to do a ﬁlm about Janis Joplin. The ﬁlm is in production, tentatively slated for release in 2010, called The Gospel According to Janis; initially, the brash singer Pink was signed to play Joplin, but actress and budding singer Zooey Deschanel has replaced her in the title role. Other actresses who were up for the role include Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, and Scarlett Johansson. Texas native and actress Renée Zellweger is associated with another ﬁlm called Piece of My Heart that chronicles Joplin’s life but the ﬁlm does not yet have a director.

Janis Joplin sings the blues as hard as any black person.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama! Columbia, 1969 Pearl. Columbia, 1971 Joplin in Concert. Columbia, 1972 Janis Joplin’s Greatest Hits. Columbia, 1973 Janis. Columbia, 1993 18 Essential Songs. Columbia, 1995 Box of Pearls. Sony/Legacy, 1999

Janis Joplin

FURTHER READING Bangs, Lester. “Janis Joplin: In Concert.” Rolling Stone 110 (June 8, 1972). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/janisjoplin/albums/album/152830/review/ 5942155/in_concert. Burks, John. “I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama! Review.” Rolling Stone 45 (November 1, 1969). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/janisjoplin/ albums/album/93275/review/5941359/i_got_dem_ol_kozmic_blues_again_mama. Cash, Rosanne. “The Immortals: The Fifty Greatest Artists of All Time.” Rolling Stone 946 (April 15, 2004). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/ janisjoplin/articles/story/5939239/46_janis_joplin. Echols, Alice. Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1999. Evans, Paul and Richard Skanse. “Janis Joplin biography.” Rolling Stone online; excerpt from The New Rolling Stone Album Guide. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004. Available online at http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/janisjoplin/biography. Friedman, Myra. Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1973. Hardin, John. “Cheap Thrills Review.” Rolling Stone 17 (September 14, 1968). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/bigbrotherandtheholdingcompany/albums/ album/145787/review/6067715/cheap_thrills. Heckman, Don. “Janis Joplin, 1943–1970.” New York Times (October 11, 1970). Jackson, Buzzy. A Bad Woman Feeling Good: Blues and the Women Who Sing Them. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005. Nelson, Paul. “Janis: The Judy Garland of Rock?” Rolling Stone 29 (March 15, 1969). Ofﬁcial Janis Joplin Estate Web site. See www.ofﬁcialjanis.com. Ruhlmann, William, and Bruce Eder. “Cheap Thrills review.” All Music Guide. Available online at wm09.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:3ifrxql5ldfe. Unterberger, Richie. “I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama! Review.” All Music Guide. Available online at www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:gzfexq rdldhe. Walters, Barry. “Pearl.” Rolling Stone online (June 16, 2005). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/janisjoplin/albums/album/187603/review/7371337/ pearl. Zito, Tom. “The Death of Janis Joplin.” Washington Post (October 6, 1970).

231

Courtesy of Photofest

Carole King

234

Women Icons of Popular Music

OVERVIEW The career of songwriter and singer Carole King is marked by two distinct stages. The ﬁrst part took place while she was decidedly behind the scenes during the 1960s and was known for the songs she wrote or co-wrote for other artists. Her place in music, however, was forever changed in the 1970s, when she became known for the songs she wrote and sang herself. In the 1960s, she wrote songs that became big hits, such as “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?,” performed by the Shirelles, and “Up on the Roof,” performed by the Drifters, with lyrics written by her ﬁrst husband Gerry Gofﬁn. Their songwriting success paved the way for her success in recording and for her second solo release, Tapestry (1971). The album became a multiplatinum success and had a deﬁning role, along with the likes of James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, and Jackson Browne, in the singer/songwriter genre that was emerging in the early 1970s. It was also a signiﬁcant feminist achievement not necessarily for its content per se but because King wrote, sung, arranged, played, and controlled her own musical product. However, it was not the ﬁrst of such milestones achieved by King; in 1962, when she worked on the Little Eva album The Loco-Motion, King became the ﬁrst woman in American popular music to boast a composing, arranging, and conducting credit on an album. In the 1960s and through the 1970s, King and Gofﬁn wrote hundreds of songs together, many of which became hits for other singers and groups. Husband-and-wife songwriting pairs were not unusual during the Brill Building era (see sidebar), named after a building on Broadway in New York City with which Paul Simon, Neil Sedaka, Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil, Burt Bacharach, and several other prominent artists are associated. The music publishing companies housed in that building operated like a veritable songwriting factory. Many of Gofﬁn-King’s songs were performed by African American artists and were also associated with the “girl group” sound that was so prevalent and popular in the early 1960s. As the decade wore on, King and Gofﬁn eventually split and she forged her own solo career. King won a Grammy for Record of the Year for the song “It’s Too Late” in 1971. The album from which it came, Tapestry, was awarded both Album of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. In the same year, the song “You’ve Got a Friend” won her a Grammy Award for Song of the Year/New Song of the Year. James Taylor won a Grammy for Best Male Vocal Performance for his recording of “You’ve Got a Friend,” which to date is his only number one single. Essentially, King swept the major categories at the Grammy Awards that year and is the ﬁrst woman to win four Grammy Awards in one year. It should be no surprise that Tapestry, which yielded many hit singles in 1971, went to number one in that same year and remained on the charts through 1975. King was proliﬁc during this period, and Writer: Carole King went to eighty-four in 1971. In 1972 the album Music went to number one

Carole King

The Brill Building Era: Songwriters, Hitmakers, Husbands and Wives During much of the 1960s, much of the music on the radio and performed by girl groups, pop singers, and even Elvis Presley was usually written by someone else. The era of the singer/songwriter had yet to arrive. Popular singers with strong followings typically had a cadre of songwriters jockeying for a chance to get their material on the radio. If you were prolific and quick, you were ensured steady work. Many of the songwriters worked in or around the Brill Building at 1619 Broadway in New York City while Carole King and husband Gerry Goffin worked at nearby Aldon publishing house at 1650 Broadway, also affiliated with the era. The scene was characterized by husbandand-wife songwriting teams, such as King and Goffin, contemporaries Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, and Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry, who enjoyed a friendly but competitive camaraderie. As Ken Emerson noted in Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era, the teams boast hundreds of top hits and his-and-her copyrights, among them “The Loco-Motion,” “We Gotta Get Out of this Place,” “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’,” “Chapel of Love,” and “Leader of the Pack.” Barry and Greenwich famously teamed with rising songwriter and producer Phil Spector for songs such as “Be My Baby,” “Da Doo Ron Ron,” and “Then He Kissed Me.” The music stems generally from rhythm and blues, and the lyrics concern themselves with love relationships. Burt Bacharach and Hal David are also linked with the Brill Building; the duo penned songs that became hits for the Carpenters (“Close to You”) and Dionne Warwick (“Walk On By”). It inspired the film Grace of My Heart, in which Illeana Douglas plays a songwriter loosely based on Carole King.

and Rhymes and Reasons went to number two. Fantasy in 1973 went to six and Wrap Around Joy hit number one in 1974, followed by Thoroughbred in 1976, which went to number three. It would be her last album to make it into the Top 10 Pop Albums chart. By the mid-1980s, her recording pace had slowed. Later in her career, King released two albums, Love Makes the World in 2001, which fared well in the Top Independent Album chart at number seven and number sixteen on the Top Internet Albums. Love Makes the World, however, barely slipped into the Billboard 200 at 158. The times had changed for music distribution, but an artist with staying power like King fared well by releasing her music independently. In 2004, she launched a series of performances that she called The Living Room Tour, and the album it inspired, The Living Room Tour, debuted at seventeen on both the Billboard 200 and Top Internet Albums when it was released in summer 2005. It was a critical success, too, and became her highest-charting record in twenty-eight years.

235

236

Women Icons of Popular Music

Although King’s records slipped off the charts, she never stopped working and never limited herself to who or what her audience might be. Over the years she has lent her compositional skills to writing music for a children’s television program, Really Rosie, along with contributing music to ﬁlms, working as an actress, and ﬁghting for environmental and political causes. In the case of the latter, King is not alone; many who came of age during the 1960s espoused similarly activist beliefs. King has more than 500 copyrighted songs to her name, making her one of the most proliﬁc female songwriters in American popular music. Critics were so enamored of Tapestry for its immediacy and its memorable melodies that many of her subsequent albums could never realistically compare. Additionally, King seemed to capture the zeitgeist, embodying a certain kind of loose and unpackaged female perspective. Simply put, Tapestry offered popular culture another kind of woman in rock. Critic Robert Christgau credited her with giving female singers a new and culturally acceptable way of expressing themselves in a more unaffected, “natural” way, within the range of a woman’s natural voice. It is almost beside the point that King was not a trained singer and did not have the most technically impressive voice nor did she achieve sex symbol status. The quality of her songwriting supercedes any conversation about such trappings or expectations—her songs are direct, emotionally rich, and melodically memorable. One might say that Carole King could set the contents of the phone book to music and make it engaging.

EARLY YEARS The daughter of a ﬁreﬁghter and a schoolteacher, King’s career can be described as precocious. Growing up in New York, King got a very early start; classically trained, she started playing the piano when she was four. She grew up idolizing the composing team of Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, who wrote many hits for Elvis Presley, along with music and lyrics for Broadway musicals. As a teenager, King started her ﬁrst band with some other female students, calling the group the Co-sines. While she was a student at James Madison High school she made some demo records with her friend Paul Simon, for $25 each. King played drums and piano, Simon played guitar and bass, and both of them sang. Biographer James Perone asserted that this experience early in their respective careers proved formative, because later they both would produce records. King and Simon’s experience recording together gave each of them some knowledge of multitrack recording, which at the time was still relatively new technology. As a teenager, she also was friendly with songwriter Neil Sedaka, who was impressed by the fact that she had perfect pitch. In his biography Sedaka said that her mother thought he was not a good inﬂuence on her, because she would neglect her homework to write songs; it is rumored

Carole King

that they dated as teenagers. King denies any romantic entanglement with him but does admit to being impressed by him. In high school, she created a special musical project that commemorated World War II and celebrated a creative youth culture. It seemed as if she were sending a message to the mostly Jewish student body about the sacriﬁces their elders made for her generation to experience artistic freedom and creativity. She contributed an essay to her senior yearbook that was mostly a metaphor about music and success. By the time she was a senior, she had already released her ﬁrst single on ABC-Paramount Records under the name Carole King (her birth name was Carole Klein). The songs were a ballad and a rocker and featured her own words and music. When King started working in earnest on her music, success came quickly and, for the songwriting part of her career, mostly unabated. After high school, King attended Queens College with the intention of becoming a teacher. However, she soon fell in with other musicians, including chemistry major Gerry Gofﬁn who was three years her senior. He was looking for someone who could write music for the lyrics he wrote for a musical based on the novel The Young Lovers. She initially turned him down, saying she wanted to write rock and roll songs, not music for plays and that her father had prohibited her from songwriting, anyway. They started writing songs together, with King leading him toward the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry. In 1959 King became pregnant at the age of seventeen, and the pair wed on August 30. She dropped out of college and worked as a secretary until late in her pregnancy. They lived in Brooklyn and worked on songs in the evening, with the need to make money even more urgent when their daughter Louise was born on March 23, 1960. They sold two songs fairly quickly, but the songs themselves did not fare terribly well. In 1959, Neil Sedaka wrote a song in tribute to her called “Oh! Carol,” but her responsorial song “Oh! Neil” did not do well on the charts. The lyrics were more along the lines of a satire rather than ﬂattering Sedaka. “I’d even give up a month’s supply of chewin’ tobacky/Just to be known as Mrs. Neil Sedaky,” King sings, adopting a false Southern twang. However, the song and its B-side, “A Very Special Boy,” served a small but important purpose, because it caught the attention of Don Kirshner, owner of Aldon Music. (Sedaka was working with Kirshner, too, which certainly helped.) Kirshner guaranteed King and Gofﬁn an advance against royalties of $1000 a year. The amount would be doubled if Aldon decided to renew their deal for another year and tripled if the company decided to renew it for a third year. Gofﬁn and King started working as staff songwriters at Al Nevins and Don Kirshner’s Aldon Music, a publishing house founded in 1958 across the street from the Brill Building. The songwriting that came out of the ofﬁces of Aldon Music became such classic hits, aimed at the young market, that they spawned an entire adjective—the Brill Building sound. Similar to the approach during the Tin Pan Alley Era, the idea behind the Brill Building was akin to a factory

237

238

Women Icons of Popular Music

of songwriting, with writers turning out hits with assembly line efﬁciency and volume; it was thought that such a work ethic would produce a hit. The songwriters were usually paid per song, so it was ﬁnancially beneﬁcial to work tenaciously. Consequently, more than 200 of King’s songs had been recorded commercially by 1963—the year of her twenty-ﬁrst birthday. This was a big help because by the time she —Tori Amos was twenty, she and Gofﬁn had two young daughters, as well. During their ﬁrst year at Aldon, however, few of the songs they wrote were recorded, and those that were, such as “Bobby Bobby Bobby,” an ode to Bobby Darin sung by Jo-Ann Campbell, did not make a mark on the charts. Still, they kept writing, and Kirshner would offer encouragement, sometimes sending them an extra $100 to help with their bills at the end of the month. It was an unusual, fortuitous time for songwriters, and Gofﬁn and King found themselves in good company. There were many Brill Building male-female songwriting partnerships, such as married couples Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, along with Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. Several reports from friends and associates of theirs at the time point toward King as the more ambitious of the pair. Certainly, Gofﬁn and King were distinguished among their Brill Building peers not only for their proliﬁc nature but the high quality of their demo recordings. It is worth pausing here to note that throughout her career, King’s personal life remained somewhat mysterious. Overall, there is very little about King’s family and her upbringing. Similarly, there is little concrete information about her marriages, as King did not live the typical celebrity lifestyle. She remains to this day an extremely private person who does not sit for extensive interviews or press coverage. Some reports indicate that her family tried to prevent her from a career in music and others suggest that she changed her name to perform as Carole King to avoid embarrassing her conservative Jewish family. Recent work by biographer James Perone, however, lays to rest that misconception, stating that there is no evidence that her family tried to dissuade her from a music business career.

To me one of the best classic pop writers is Carole King. Her songs go beyond the usual limits; they’re not the kind you hear one week on the radio and then a year later it’s out of there.

CAREER PATH The Brill Building and Goffin-King Years, 1960–1969 The struggle together to write songs as a pair would soon pay off for King and Gofﬁn, along with many of their songwriting friends. Their collaboration and marriage lent itself to a stream of inspiration. After an evening out in fall 1960, Gofﬁn came home to ﬁnd a note on their tape recorder from King, who had gone out to play mah-jongg with some friends, saying that Kirshner wanted

Carole King

239

lyrics the next day for the Shirelles, who were fresh off their hit “Tonight’s the Night.” King had worked It’s still me, it’s always been on some of it and left him just a few verses and no me in different phases. bridge, all on piano. Gofﬁn came home and took a crack at it, and lyrics came quickly. When King got home later, they added a bridge together, ﬁnished the song, and went to bed. It was met with some resistance from the Shirelles lead singer Shirley Owens, who did not think it sounded right for the group. King wrote a string arrangement, which made the difference, giving the song more of an emotional punch. In January 1961, “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” became a number one hit for the Shirelles and became the ﬁrst song by a female group to hit number one on the pop charts since the McGuire sisters did so in 1958; it was the ﬁrst hit of its kind for the pop group of African American women. The content though, which wondered if a woman’s lover would still care for her the morning after, was a bit racy for the early 1960s, insinuating a sexual liaison without directly stating it. “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” enabled the pair to focus strictly on songwriting. Kirshner gave them each a $10,000 advance, and Gofﬁn recalled King driving up to his workplace at a lab via limousine to tell him to quit his day job. Their next number one hit was “Take Good Care of My Baby,” sung by Bobby Vee, a song that almost wound up in the hands of Cynthia Weil. King and Gofﬁn and Jack Keller wrote “Run to Him,” and Vee had another hit, this one reaching number two. Vee would record more than a dozen songs by Gofﬁn and King, including “Walkin’ With My Angel.” They were successful, but the record company made the most money on the music. Impatient and tired of rejection from the music business at large, Aldon created its own labels, Companion and Dimension, so they could release music more quickly and see more of the proﬁt. When the song “It Might As Well Rain Until September” was rejected as a Bobby Vee song, Kirshner and Gofﬁn took matters into their own hands. They had King sing it herself with her vocals multitracked. This was her ﬁrst solo song since “Oh! Neil.” “It Might As Well Rain Until September” was released on the Companion label and reached number twenty-two. Aldon reissued it on the Dimension label after the big success of King and Gofﬁn’s third number one hit, “The LocoMotion,” which was written for and sung by their babysitter, Little Eva Boyd. In 1962, the seventeen-year-old had a number one smash that has been since covered by a number of other artists. The song was unusual because it was rough, unadorned—no strings—and straightforward, capitalizing on the dance-craze songs like Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” without speciﬁcally being written for an established dance, per se. What’s more, when “The LocoMotion” hit number one in August 1962, it unseated Neal Sedaka’s “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.” “The Loco-Motion” is remarkable because it has been recorded by two other artists in two subsequent decades; in 1974, Grand

240

Women Icons of Popular Music

Funk Railroad had a number one hit with it, and Kylie Minogue took it to number three in 1988. During the early 1960s, writing a hit for the Drifters (who worked extensively with Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller) was a coveted achievement among songwriters. Gofﬁn and King had their opportunity with the songs “Some Kind of Wonderful” and “When My Little Girl is Smiling.” Ken Emerson, who has written extensively about the Brill Building era, described the arrangements on these tunes as a bit overwhelming for King’s voice but praised the lyrics, which were direct and colloquial. Finally, though, they had their big hit for the Drifters with “Up On the Roof” in 1963. Inspired perhaps by imagery from West Side Story and Latin music, King came up with the melody, and the lyrics bespoke a New York experience. The song’s beauty comes not only from the escape it describes and the peace of mind the singer seeks, but because its emotional peaks and valleys are so well mirrored by the music. It has since been recorded by James Taylor and Laura Nyro. The pair wrote songs throughout the decade that were recorded by Dusty Springﬁeld, and a number of other songs were for Phil Spector’s artists, including the controversial “He Hit Me (And it Felt Like a Kiss),” recorded by the Crystals. However, like many of the great pop songs of the early 1960s, much of Gofﬁn and King’s music was to the point, catchy, and sentimental. This description is in keeping with much of the Brill Building sound, which one might describe it as “bubble-gum pop” or “ear candy” because they were so sweet and easy to listen to. Some musicologists have noted that in general, the Brill Building songs tend to favor an “assertive” female point of view, one that was more common in blues singers such as Bessie Smith. Overall, though, King and Gofﬁn wrote more than 100 hits across genres, including a country-rock song for the Byrds (“Wasn’t Born to Follow”), the Animals (“Don’t Bring Me Down”), and Herman’s Hermits (“I’m Into Something Good”). Toward the mid- to late 1960s, the British invasion was underway. The songwriting team needed to stay sharp and adapt to the inﬂux of this new, more rock-based sound. Gofﬁn and King stayed busy through the mid- to late 1960s by writing regularly for the group the Monkees, an ad hoc band that was formed explicitly for a television program and a direct American response to The Beatles. During these years, the songs King came up with were blending more of rock’s tendencies with her own classical compositional approaches. One such song, “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” opens with a guitar riff, and the lyrics take a bit of a jab at upper-middle-class suburban life that probably was drawn from their own experiences, since the couple was living in West Orange, New Jersey. A couple of other compositions such as “The Porpoise Song,” which seems to be a response to the Beatles tune “I Am the Walrus,” and the King collaboration with lyricist Toni Stern “As We Go Along,” are reﬂective, folk-based songs that helped set the stage for what King herself would do later, on her own. Indeed, Stern became a frequent, indispensable collaborator with King.

Carole King

Additionally, King and Gofﬁn were able to transcend musical boundaries when they began writing songs for the Righteous Brothers. One of them was “Man Without A Dream,” which stems from R&B, in 1966. One of their most signiﬁcant creative achievements, however, was the 1967 Aretha Franklin tune “(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman.” Although Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler contributed to the song, too, King and Gofﬁn wrote a song with strong gospel roots that went to number eight on the Billboard pop charts. Franklin’s soulful interpretation helped solidify King and Gofﬁn as bona ﬁde songwriting stars, moving them from the girl group achievements toward more sophisticated explorations in rhythm and blues, country, and rock and roll. Franklin’s hit came at her creative zenith with Atlantic, making the success doubly signiﬁcant for King and Gofﬁn. Toward the end of the decade, it was becoming more common for artists to write their own material, especially in rock music, which was changing the landscape for songwriters who had strictly worked as hired hands for publishers. By 1968, King and Gofﬁn had split, but they did not stop working professionally altogether, continuing to collaborate periodically. After her marriage broke up, King moved to the Laurel Canyon section of Los Angeles with her two children, Sherry and Louise. The enclave was rife with songwriters; at one point during the late 1960s it was home to Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, James Taylor, Janis Joplin, and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. After she moved there she met guitarist Danny Kortchmar, known for his work with the radical rock band the Fugs, and bassist Charles Larkey of the band Myddle Class, who would soon become her second husband. Weaving Together Tapestry and Releasing Her Work King formed a group in 1968 called The City with Larkey and Kortchmar; the latter had also been part of the band Original Flying Machine with James Taylor, who was not yet a full-ﬂedged folk-rock star. Because King was reluctant to perform and suffered from stage fright, The City never toured in support of its lone, somewhat unsuccessful album produced by Lou Adler called Now That Everything’s Been Said (Ode Records), released in 1969. Much of the material as rendered by the group itself is lesser known, but the release is noteworthy because of its ambitious reach. The album begins with a waltzy Gofﬁn-King composition called “Snow Queen” that illustrates a jazz-rock hybrid that at times calls to mind Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five.” The innovative sound was starting to percolate at the turn of the decade, and groups such as Chicago and Blood, Sweat and Tears would be most closely associated with its subsequent popularization. The latter had a hit with The City’s gospelinﬂected “That Sweet Old Roll (Hi-De-Ho),” transposing the order of those phrases and calling it “Hi-De-Ho,” whereas the Byrds would record “I Wasn’t Born to Follow,” which made its way onto the soundtrack to the counterculture classic ﬁlm Easy Rider. King collaborated with lyricist Toni Stern on the

241

242

Women Icons of Popular Music

relatively up-tempo title track, whose content feels somewhat autobiographical as it tells of the aftermath of a relationship break-up. Overall, King shows early tendencies toward gospel, jazz, and soul, revealing that the seeds of her solo work, especially Tapestry, were being sown. During her work with The City and shortly thereafter, King played piano on some of James Taylor’s early hits, including “Fire and Rain,” “Sweet Baby James,” and “Country Road.” In fact, it was James Taylor who encouraged King to write her own material and record a solo album. One evening when they performed together, with King on piano, the crowd was surprised when Taylor said to her onstage, “Why don’t we play one of your songs?” The pair launched into “Up on the Roof.” Later, she attributed the positive reception by the audience to Taylor’s fans and the familiarity of the songs. Her comment verged on belittling her talent, but perhaps it truly was borne out of her stage fright. After the release of Tapestry, she toured to support the album. Critics noted that, for instance, although her initial stage presence was unassuming, it quickly changed once she started performing “I Feel the Earth Move.” Her voice was not technically perfect, but was still compelling because of its expressiveness and deceptive strength. The time with The City, and its lack of traction, helped King turn inward and focus on a solo career. The encouragement, too, from Taylor helped her launch into the material for Writer, released in 1970; he returned the favor and played acoustic guitar on the record. The album was not met with overwhelming success, although its sales of about 6000 copies did encourage King to continue. King’s backing band included Kortchmar and Larkey again, along with Joel O’Brien on drums and other assorted female backup singers and keyboard players. The album’s title is a statement of her identity, reﬂecting the fact that the songs were all written by King in collaboration with Gofﬁn and Stern. The material did not really connect with audience, most likely for a combination of reasons ranging from weaker material than the albums that bookended it, to production that could have made better use of her voice (which was sacriﬁced to the guitar work of Kortchmar and Taylor), to packaging that was not terribly distinct and eye-catching, especially in comparison to Tapestry. However, critics reacted well to the recording despite its lack of sales traction. A couple of the tracks feel either corny or abstract, such as “Raspberry Jam” and “Spaceship Races” respectively, and indistinct; that lack of emotional intimacy makes it a bit harder for the listener to connect. But even those moments show something about King; for as corny as “Raspberry Jam” might be, the band here stretches out and ambles along in an open, loose way and the spacey “Spaceship Races” is almost a rock song. King’s version of “Goin’ Back” is memorable, but “Up on the Roof” entrances the listener. The song that feels the most revealing and autobiographical, though, is the heartfelt, gratitude-ﬁlled “Child of Mine,” a Gofﬁn-King piece that foreshadows the introspection of Tapestry and many of her subsequent releases.

Carole King

If her work with The City and Writer showed growing pains of adolescence, then 1971’s Tapestry seems like a fully formed adult in comparison. Many of the artists worked together again on the Lou Alder–produced Tapestry, which was both a critical and commercial hit, selling millions of copies, remaining on the charts for several years, and inspiring platitudes from the burgeoning ﬁeld of rock criticism. Tapestry resulted in two number one singles, the very adult break-up song “It’s Too Late” and the gospel-driven, rollicking love song “I Feel the Earth Move,” along with “So Far Away,” which reached fourteen in 1971. “So Far Away,” which laments the ﬂeeting nature of humanity in the ﬁrst line “You’re So Far Away/Doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore/It would be so ﬁne to see your face at my door” and goes onto perhaps speciﬁcally lament the absence of a loved one. Additionally, King wrote the achingly plaintive “You’ve Got a Friend,” which James Taylor would interpret so well that it became his only number one single to date. The title track, too, goes a long way to bring the record together; the metaphor of a tapestry allows King to express the notion that our experiences are all part of one interconnected, stitched-together tapestry. In keeping with that idea, it makes sense that King reached back and offered her own renditions of “Natural Woman” and “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” suggesting that the experiences of those songs are part of a continuum. Tapestry, unlike some of King’s earlier work, was more mature in its content. The experiences in the songs come from a woman with two children and two marriages before the age of thirty. The broad range of her appeal lies in the honesty and accessibility of her material. Producer Lou Adler made the tracks easy to listen to as a counterpoint to her music’s messages, which are not quite so simple despite their everyday concerns—friendship, love, relationships. The album art, too, reinforced the sonic message where the imagery of Writer failed to connect; Tapestry’s cover features King sitting by a window working on a tapestry, wearing loose jeans with her long hair ﬂowing. A cat ﬁgures into the photograph as well, and the personal, domestic portrait it paints suggests her living room. Ultimately, however, many critics agree that this record was a watershed for many reasons. It further established the presence of the singer/songwriter, whose voice and instrument would receive their proper sonic presentation in the foreground of recording, such as had occurred to her contemporaries James Taylor, Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell, and Paul Simon. Tapestry also established her individuality as an artist. Many critics recognize that her signature style marked the ﬁrst such widely recognized achievement by a female popular artist. Throughout Tapestry, the songs are direct, open, honest, and warm. Their melodies are memorable. The appeal of her voice—average, unfettered, imperfect, and more conversational than stylized—was unusual, too; female singers did not usually gain attention by singing in such a normal, unsexualized way. King’s voice literally opened the door for other women to be themselves rather than conform to a speciﬁc type. Additionally, the content

243

244

Women Icons of Popular Music

of the songs was more concrete where perhaps the work of some of her contemporaries, such as Joni Mitchell, was often more consistently poetic or abstract. King brought the straightforward approach of her popular 1960s hits and fused it with lyrics that were personal, sentimental, and concerned with human relationships. Despite the fact much of the album’s content was soft and stereotypically feminine, King’s music can be seen as part of a continuum of feminist statements, intentional or not, because many of her achievements were unusual for female artists, and many of her musical statements resemble the prevailing sense of openness and freedom women were experiencing around this time as a result of the women’s movement’s gains in the late 1960s. The album was a tremendous success and to date has sold more than 10 million copies in the United States and 25 million worldwide. Topping Tapestry would not be easy. But her Brill Building training made her naturally proliﬁc, and King would release six more albums through 1977. Over the course of her next couple of releases, King did not deviate too signiﬁcantly from the palette and content of Tapestry. Music went to number one on the heels of Tapestry, later in the year. Music yielded “Song of Long Ago” and the single “Sweet Seasons,” which went to number two on the Adult Contemporary chart and nine on Pop Singles. The latter offers a small glimpse in a lyric about moving with children for a life in the country— perhaps foreshadowing her move to Idaho later in the decade. The knowing, hard-won “It’s Gonna Take Some Time” would become a hit for the group the Carpenters. The record felt more full-bodied in terms of its arrangements in comparison to Tapestry, and the material overall was less derived from previously written work. Her next release, 1972’s Rhymes and Reasons went to number two. Overall, the album feels darker, more philosophical, with King ﬁnding that there are no easy answers, exploring “the rhyme and reason of it all” on the title track. King wrote half of the album’s twelve songs, and four are King-Stern collaborations, one was written with Gofﬁn, and the sweet love song, “The First Day in August,” was written with husband Charles Larkey. The album capper, the vaguely religious “Been to Canaan” propelled by King’s piano and simple bongos, reached the Top 25 Pop Singles chart and number one on the Adult Contemporary. The sort of homecoming described in this song exempliﬁes a consistent theme that had started most notably on Tapestry—a desire for a safe space, a refuge, and security. Although these albums could not be construed as commercial failures, the material is not as memorable as that of Tapestry because it didn’t provide the complex insight that her mass audience had come to expect from her music. Music, another number one Billboard pop album, followed Tapestry, with lyrical content that treads in the same territory of friendship, loyalty, and relationships. Although she also brought back the same musicians to back her on Music, the results were mixed. There didn’t seem to be any growth in her style since Tapestry, but the material is uniﬁed by the ideas that life is uncertain,

Carole King

unstable, and bittersweet. King’s warm delivery provides an immediacy that overrides any shortcomings of the album. Additionally, her love of rhythm and blues makes her a more soulful composer than most white musicians. That she begins the album with “Brother, Brother,” which feels like a response to Marvin Gaye’s social observations in “What’s Goin’ On?” or the work of Curtis Mayﬁeld, is no accident. Two other songs are reminiscent of Motown, but her songs work best when they address “you” because they are inviting to the listener. King toured infrequently but lent her voice to political causes and other issues she believed in. In 1972, King performed at a fundraising concert for the presidential campaign of George McGovern alongside the likes of Quincy Jones, James Taylor, and Barbra Streisand. When she performed in Central Park in May 1973 at a free concert, more than 100,000 people showed up, forcing the sound engineer to work extra hard, using six times the equipment that the Rolling Stones carried on their 1972 tour. At this concert she performed a number of songs from 1973’s conceptual album Fantasy. Here, she stepped out of the realm of writing primarily from personal experience, instead taking positions on civil rights and humanitarianism and tackling social issues such as welfare in “Welfare Symphony” and female domesticity in “Weekdays.” The work is more of a formal song cycle instead of the lyrical tracks for which King is known. The calculation of the album seems an attempt to dispel the idea critics had that she was becoming predictable, but King seems to have lost something along the way. Some critics, such as King enthusiast Jon Landau, regarded Fantasy, which went to number six on the pop album chart, as her worst to date at the time. The fall 1974 release Wrap Around Joy fared somewhat better in the hands of critics and went to number one on the pop albums chart. On this record, King worked with Steely Dan lyricist and vocalist David Palmer. “Jazzman,” an ode to music, ﬁnds King imploring “Make it nice, play it clean jazzman” and featured a searing saxophone turn by popular session musician Tom Scott. The song hit number two on the pop singles chart. The band does not seem to be lending her sufﬁcient support, and the album sounds as if Adler and King, working together again, were trying to hard to please everyone and regain that mass audience they found with Tapestry. In 1975, King took a step away from her solo work by creating music for a television program called Really Rosie, with lyrics from children’s author and illustrator Maurice Sendak. The work was so successful that it eventually inspired an off-Broadway musical. King served as the voice of Rosie, a Jewish girl from Brooklyn who is putting together a ﬁlm in which she stars and directs. King’s daughters participated in the project, too. In the context of the previously successful and educational Schoolhouse Rock recordings, her pianodriven, lively compositions set to stories about the indifferent child Pierre, who would repeat “I don’t care,” and a boy named Chicken Soup, King and Sendak’s collaboration resulted in an educational and entertaining work that engaged both adults and children alike.

245

246

Women Icons of Popular Music

In 1975 Gofﬁn and King worked together on Thoroughbred, which is noteworthy, too, thanks to its contributions from other songwriters of the day, including David Crosby, James Taylor, and Graham Nash on backing vocals on “High Out of Time” and “I’d Like to Know You Better.” At this point, Larkey was not playing on the record; the pair had split. The selection of the title Thoroughbred invites the idea of something that is beautiful and pure but somewhat distant and unapproachable—a fair assessment of King’s career at this point. Many of the songs, especially the optimistic “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine” and “There’s a Space Between Us,” seem to celebrate the ebb and ﬂow of human relationships; in particular, the cyclical, inevitable nature of Gofﬁn and King’s. It was her last release with Lou Adler producing and her last album for Ode. In 1977, King fell in love with songwriter Rick Evers and married him. She started recording for Capitol and collaborated with him and the band Navarro for her next release, Simple Things. Around this time, King moved to Idaho and many of her songs reﬂect a preoccupation with the environment and nature. The songs, despite the album title, deal with important, heavy issues such as politics, overpopulation, and man’s inhumanity to man. The addition of Navarro marked a sonic departure toward a more guitar-oriented sound. Optimism, though, continues to surface; the idea that love and kindness can solve the world’s problems feels like a nostalgic grasp at the sentiments of the late 1960s. The covers of Thoroughbred and Simple Things also do much to cement her tie with open space, a love of the land, and rural living in the West. Many critics felt that Simple Things’s strength lies in its music and not the lyrics. Sadly, though, Evers died in early 1978 of a drug overdose. At his death, they were working on 1978’s Welcome Home, an album that perhaps unintentionally served better as a showcase for Navarro than the talents of King, whose vision and playing seem to be subsumed by the band. Her third Capitol release, 1979’s Touch the Sky, dismissed many of Navarro’s musicians and featured some of her own material in addition to songwriting with Navarro’s remaining guitarist Mark Hallman. Idealistic themes continued, along with dabblings in country rock, in what may be an autobiographical song about an absent lover, “Dreamlike I Wander.” Current Day: 1980s To the Present In 1980, she released Pearls, which featured her own versions of songs she wrote with Gofﬁn that were well-known hits in the 1960s, along with some new Gofﬁn-King collaborations. It hit number forty-four and included her own takes on “The Loco-Motion” and “One Fine Day,” which went to number twelve on the singles chart. King revisited “Wasn’t Born to Follow” and “Goin’ Back,” the latter an apt way to end the album. Pearls received mixed reviews, but in comparison to much of her work from the mid- to late 1970s, it was her best effort in years. It reminded the record-buying public that King was still a vital artist with signiﬁcant appeal.

Carole King

King has not charted signiﬁcantly since 1980, but her releases, especially 1982’s One to One, through that decade continued to explore socially conscious themes such as environmentalism and even child-raising techniques, along with some of her staple themes of love and relationships. In 1983 she released Speeding Time, which marked a reunion with Lou Adler and a more contemporary direction, more heavy use of synthesizers, along with guitarist Lee Ritenour, drummer Russ Kunkel, and percussionist Bobbye Hall. But Adler drenched her voice in reverberation—such was a more common style at the time—obscuring King’s nuances as a vocalist, and in her catalog it remains an historical oddity, a symbol of its time rather than a reﬂection of her signature style. Six years passed before another album, City Streets, would be released, which also featured guitarist Eric Clapton and sounded more like a rock album, with production by guitarist Rudy Guess, who would work with her for about the next twenty years. King’s voice came back up in the mix, closer to the listener, which gave the tracks a necessary added fullness. By this point King was married to her fourth husband, rancher Richard Sorensen. A few years later, in 1993, she released Colour of Your Dreams, which many regard as one of her better studio albums. The production is polished, the musical arrangements are fully realized, and King sings with a renewed passion and sounds more conﬁdent. The Gofﬁn-King collaboration “Standing in the Rain” is a standout with King’s voice multitracked. “Now and Forever,” which was featured in the ﬁlm A League of Their Own, was the album’s only song to make a dent on the radio, appearing at eighteen on the Adult Contemporary chart. Even more time went by, with 2001 revisiting Love Makes the World, an independent release on her own label Rockingale, which was well received by critics. King collaborated with many different artists, and the record featured guest appearances from Celine Dion on “The Reason” to a duet with openly gay singer k.d. lang on “An Uncommon Love,” a song that seeks acceptance for all kinds of love relationships. The title track was written with Dave Schommer and Sam Hollander, and it features some loose, hip-hop-styled beats, just barely perceptible over what is essentially, if stripped to its piano basics, a ballad. King proclaims, “I can’t stop believing love makes the world go round,” showing her idealism intact. King also worked with Carole Bayer Sager and Babyface (Kenny Edmonds) on the song “You Can Do Anything,” a more soulful, late 1990s–sounding R&B song. All in all, the album dabbles in a contemporary sound while still remaining true to King’s place in songwriting history. In summer 2004, she decided to tour because the timing felt right and launched Carole King: The Living Room Tour. The tour came about after she enjoyed performing at people’s homes and in small events for political or environmental events and fundraisers. It makes sense: The best of Carole King’s work is immediate, personal, and intimate. Predictably, in 2005 she released a double-CD set that chronicled the tour with acoustic arrangements of twentyseven songs. The release, also on Rockingale Records, was unique because it

247

248

Women Icons of Popular Music

was available not only through traditional outlets and at her tour stops but at all Starbucks coffee shop locations. In addition to two new songs, on the album King revisited older songs, usually to the accompaniment of just piano and acoustic guitars. During the tour, she appeared in New York City for the ﬁrst time in twelve years with a sold-out Radio City Music Hall show.

MISSION, MOTIVATION, PROCESS One of the themes that came up repeatedly in her life in interviews with the press is the fact that King has managed to have a life and maintain some independence outside her fame. From the rise to fame with Tapestry, King has been somewhat reclusive, granting very few interviews and making very few public appearances; she has not been a tireless performer, chalking up dates on the road year after year. Consequently, because of her relatively low proﬁle, discovering much personal information about King and her process of songwriting is somewhat challenging. It seems, however, that this withdrawal from the machine of celebrity has enabled King to maintain perspective. For much of her adult life post-Tapestry, she lived out of the celebrity limelight in unlikely places such as Idaho and Texas (the latter brieﬂy), closer to nature. King has kept her proﬁle low, but she never stopped working. King’s Web site, however, offers an intriguing look at her approach. There is a section titled “Ideas” in which she expresses her belief in how important ideas are to us, speciﬁcally “the idea of love; the idea of family; of contributing to the well-being of humanity and animals and taking care of the environment; of affecting even one person in a positive way during your lifetime” (King Web site 2007). When it was time for her to overcome her stage fright and start working on her own songs, King said she was able to use the lessons she learned from working with Gofﬁn. “[S]ay it truthfully and make it rhyme—and it all sort of came out. It worked” (Mitchell 2005). Her experience as a backing musician to James Taylor in 1971, around the time of the release of Tapestry, literally brought her out of the shadows and into the limelight. She also developed her own vocal musicality during her years with Gofﬁn and working among other proliﬁc songwriters during the 1960s, when they often swapped songwriting partners and spoke to each other in song, borrowing a riff here or a turn of phrase there. They couldn’t help but be inspired by the collective work that was being produced because working quarters were so close and walls were thin. As much as they did interact amiably with the other songwriters, they did, however, still experience much competition, both implicit and explicit. Even after their marriage dissolved, King and Gofﬁn continued to work together throughout most of her career. It is a testament to her talent that despite the fact King worked with collaborators most of her career, in addition to writing her own material, she never stopped sounding like herself.

Carole King

Even when her records perhaps deviated or suffered from production, packaging, or band misﬁres, King was still a presence. The dedication to truthfulness is still an intrinsic part of her music. Reﬂecting on the genesis of her 2001 album Love Makes the World, King said, “For me, the reason for a Carole King album, the reason for my musical expression, is honesty. Even if I’m writing for someone else, I’m writing how I honestly think that person might be feeling about that situation in that moment” (King Web site 2007). In an interview on her Web site, King discussed the making of the record and expressed satisfaction and enjoyment at working with songwriters of all different genres and ages as well as enthusiasm about the opportunity to play with layering, the multitracked vocals, and use new technologies. In an interview with National Public Radio in 2001, King reﬂected back on her process and talked about Love Makes the World. Although she has historically been reluctant to speak to the press, she was candid with interviewer Liane Hansen, talking about the origins of her songs and the process of writing. For someone who spent many years writing on command in tiny cubicles at Aldon, her comments suggest that there was something mysterious or at least mystical that occurred. Looking back on some things she wrote when she was younger, she said, “How did I know that? I didn’t have the life experience to be able to write that, which gives me credence to the theory that we don’t do things on our own. . . . When I write, something is there beside me” (Hansen 2001). Other interviews at the time ﬁnd King wise and articulate, illuminating the nuances between being an artist and being a songwriter. King acknowledged that the idea of calling herself a recording artist “carries a lot of baggage,” especially because of the pressures to perform well, sell records, and please fans (King Web site 2007). She said that after Tapestry some people wanted to categorize her music in a certain way and described her career subsequent to that as not concerned per se with making big hits but “exploring my creative muse as a songwriter. As an artist I’m kind of limited to what people want me to do” (King Web site 2007). Ultimately, she said if she tried to write and perform a hard rock song like one that Bruce Springsteen would sing, no one would believe her. However, King said she can write that song and someone like Springsteen can perform it. At a visit to Yale University, a campus publication printed an interview with her in which she said that she is always asked which comes ﬁrst: lyrics or music? But for King, the method varies when she writes her own work—she said sometimes the music comes ﬁrst, and other times the lyrics. When she worked with Gofﬁn, she would come up with the melody and he would write the lyrics, and they would collaborate from that point. Throughout her career, others have commented on her process, remarking on her ambition and her focus. A recording engineer who worked with her and Gofﬁn during the Brill Building years, Brooks Arthur, described her as methodical. “It was almost

249

250

Women Icons of Popular Music

A good song to me is a good marriage of melody and lyric. It says something.

like architecture. She would sing and do a demo that would be better than any of the records were. It was a blueprint, like building a home. She had a clear plan in mind,” said Arthur (Emerson 2005, 113).

LEGACY AND OTHER INTERESTS King has been interested in politics and the environment and has been an advocate for the environmental and children for most of her career. She was honored at Carole King: Making Music With Friends, A Concert for Our Children, Our Health and Our Planet in 1999, with many other musicians in attendance. Famously, her Central Park concert in 1973 garnered headlines not only because of its attendance but because King kindly asked her fans to pick up their trash on the way out, and many did. Lately, she supports the White Cloud Council, which she helped found in 1997, an organization that is dedicated to preserving green space. King also supports the Rockies Prosperity Act, and in 2002 formed the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act Network to help promote the passage of the act. Throughout her career, she has performed at beneﬁt concerts for presidential and other political candidates as far back as George McGovern in 1972, Gary Hart in 1984, and John Kerry in 2004. Currently, she remains actively involved with the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Wilderness Watch, Western Lands Project, Downwinders, and Citizens for Smart Growth, urging visitors to her Web site “It’s your environment. GET INVOLVED!” (King Web site 2007). In 1985, she contributed music in collaboration with saxophonist David Sanborn for the ﬁlm Murphy’s Romance—she also had a small role. In 1988 she starred in an off-Broadway production of A Minor Incident, and in 1994 she made her Broadway acting debut in Blood Brothers, taking over Petula Clark’s role for six months. But the year before that, her album Tapestry was immortalized in the off-Broadway revue Tapestry: The Music of Carole King. In 1995, a tribute album with contributions from the disparate likes of Richard Marx, Celine Dion, Faith Hill, and Rod Stewart called Tapestry Revisited was released. A wide range of artists such as Celine Dion, Natalie Merchant, Rod Stewart, Trisha Yearwood, and Courtney Love have all covered her songs. King’s musicality has inﬂuenced her daughters, and her music has also found its way onto movie soundtracks, including the ﬁlms You’ve Got Mail, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, One True Thing, and the Penny Marshall ﬁlm A League of their Own. King’s song “Now and Forever” from A League of Their Own won her an Oscar nomination. In 1998, she was feted in VH-1’s Rock Divas Live concert. She received an Emmy nomination for “Song of Freedom” from the TNT movie Freedom Song. Her daughters Louise and Sherry started their solo careers in 1979 with the album Kid Blue, and in addition to appearing sporadically on King’s releases have followed in their mother’s

Carole King

footsteps by working in the music business. King also contributed, along with her daughter Louise Gofﬁn, the theme song “Where You Lead” for the sitcom The Gilmore Girls, a clever comedy-drama about a mother-daughter, singleparent family; King even had a recurring role on the program as a music shop owner. Daughter Louise has a solo recording career, and daughter Sherry Gofﬁn Kondor is the brains behind Sugar Beats, an album that features children singing classic songs from the 1960s and 1970s. Purposefully or not, King’s music, in particular the songs from Tapestry, took on symbolic, iconic proportions. Carole King is also identiﬁed, both in terms of her style and the song itself, with “(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman,” which Aretha Franklin made her own. As a declaration and celebration of a woman’s level of comfort with her own sexual satisfaction and desire, King’s rendition, with just her piano and vocals and Charles Larkey on bass, is decidedly more intimate and spare; a whisper where Franklin’s is a scream. But perhaps more important, the lyrics were a feminist statement before such proclamations became more commonplace in popular culture and in music itself. Set to such a convincing background of music, the verses feel reverent and religious and the chorus becomes a natural release. Franklin repeats the phrase “You make me feel” and emphasizes the ﬁnal phrase “like a natural woman,” something that with her long hair, environmentalism, and unfettered, “natural” approach to songwriting, King embodied. Even when someone else is singing them, her lyrics leave the mark of a strong woman.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Tapestry. Ode, 1971 Music. Ode/Epic, 1971 Rhymes and Reasons. Ode/Epic, 1972 Wrap Around Joy. Ode/Epic, 1974 Thoroughbred. Ode/Epic, 1976 Her Greatest Hits: Songs of Long Ago. Ode/Epic, 1978 The Living Room Tour. Rockingale, 2005

FURTHER READING Amos, Tori, and Ann Powers. Tori Amos: Piece By Piece: A Portrait of the Artist, Her Thoughts, Her Conversations. New York: Broadway Books, 2005. Christgau, Robert. “Carole King: Five Million Friends.” Newsday (November 1972); reprinted on author Web site, see www.robertchristgau.com/xg/bk-aow/king. php, and in his book Any Old Way You Choose It: Rock and Other Pop Music, 1967–1973. New York: Penguin Books, 1973. Cohen, Mitchell S. Carole King: A Biography in Words and Pictures. New York: Sire Books/Chappell Music Company, 1976.

251

252

Women Icons of Popular Music

Crouse, Timothy. “Music.” Rolling Stone 100 (January 20, 1972). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/caroleking/albums/album/303257/review/5944630/ music. Emerson, Ken. Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era. New York: Viking, 2005. George-Warren, Holly, Patricia Romanowski, and Jon Pareles. The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001. Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/caroleking/biography. Hansen, Liane. “Carole King’s New Rhythm.” National Public Radio interview (October 21, 2001). Transcript available online at www.npr.org/templates/story/ story.php?storyId=1131861. Hirshey, Gerri. We’ve Gotta Get Out of This Place: The True, Tough Story of Women in Rock. New York: Grove Press, 2001. Holden, Stephen. “Rhymes and Reasons.” Rolling Stone 124 (December 21, 1972). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/caroleking/albums/album/188229/ review/5945906/rhymes__reasons. Holden, Stephen. “Fantasy.” Rolling Stone 140 (August 2, 1973). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/caroleking/albums/album/136983/review/5940947/ fantasy. King, Carole. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. See www.caroleking.com. Landau, Jon. “Tapestry.” Rolling Stone 81 (April 29, 1971). Available online at www .rollingstone.com/artists/caroleking/albums/album/171700/review/6068041/ tapestry. Landau, Jon. “Wrap Around Joy.” Rolling Stone 174 (November 21, 1974). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/caroleking/albums/album/99144/review/ 5945532/wrap_around_joy. Mills, Melissa. “Writer. Review.” Rolling Stone 69 (October 29, 1970). Mitchell, Russ. “Carole King Back in the Spotlight.” CBS News (July 23, 2005). Available online at www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/07/23/sunday/printable711245 .shtml. Perone, James E. The Words and Music of Carole King. Westport, CT: Praeger Press, 2006. Snyder, Rachel Louise. “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” Salon.com. Available online at www.salon.com/people/feature/1999/06/19/king/index.html. Time. “King as Queen?” (July 12, 1971). Available online at www.time.com/time/ printout/0,8816,903024,oo.html. Violante, Thomas R. “Songwriter Carole King Describes How She Makes Beautiful Music.” Yale Bulletin & Calendar (May 2, 2003). Available online at www.yale .edu/opa/v31.n28/story5.html.

AP/Wide World Photos

Madonna

254

Women Icons of Popular Music

OVERVIEW More than any other artist in the twentieth century, Madonna has proven that she is resilient and nearly indestructible. As an artist, she is known for her ceaseless ability to adapt her career as she sees ﬁt and reinvent her image; even with that chameleon-like quality she remains, immutably, Madonna. Madonna is a performer who can dress like Marilyn Monroe in a music video and a ﬂagellating ex-nun in another, who can try out a cowboy outﬁt on some releases, move to more experimentation by employing the assistance of electronic producer William Orbit, and then move to the sound of the New York Gypsy band Gogol Bordello as another element in her music. A true icon, Madonna is in a class of her own. When she burst onto the pop music scene in 1984, during the early days of MTV (see sidebar), quite simply there was no one else like her. At its core, Madonna’s music comes from her own impetus to dance, which in turn gets other people up and moving, too. Her background of studying dance accounts for that, and dancing is at the center of her live performances. Her ambition continues to set her apart from other performers, but it also makes her the subject of much criticism. Madonna’s career has been as much about making music as it has been an exercise in image creation and control, making her a subject of study among feminists and other academics. She has set the agenda for the discussion of her through her videos, music, publicity, and sexuality. She projects an image of the virgin/ whore, sinner/saint, through her music and her creative endeavors. Often, tabloid-esque stories about her personal life have superceded discussions about her music, but Madonna would not still be as immensely popular as she is if her music had not been able to adapt, change, and innovate over the past twenty years. Unafraid of change, Madonna has been a blonde, redhead, and brunette and alters her fashion approach with nearly every new album, but she has always seemed to walk the line between projecting the image of sinner and saint, and she has always courted controversy thanks to, in part, her sexual honesty and her foul mouth. From the controversial book and ﬁlm Truth or Dare to her sexually explicit antics onstage (including kissing pop star Britney Spears) and using the f--- word a dozen times on the Late Show with David Letterman, no attention is negative attention for this entertainer. Her image is alienating to some, but those who can look past the attentiongrabbing antics see an uncannily smart woman who does not compromise herself or her vision, one that involves constantly pushing against social norms and expectations. In the early part of her career, Madonna was the trend setter, but in the past decade or so, she has anticipated the trends and/or used them to suit her liking. But regardless of what one might think of Madonna, there is no denying her power and her commercial appeal. Through the years, Madonna has released scores of chart-topping upbeat dance hits such as “Holiday,” “Vogue,” and “Ray of Light” along with some memorable ballads such as “Crazy for

Madonna

Madonna and the Rise of MTV Madonna and Music Television (MTV) have been nearly synonymous—she was one of the first artists to significantly capitalize on the new medium, exploring its capabilities and pushing its boundaries. Her self-titled 1983 debut rose to the top of the charts not too long after the network’s August 1981 premiere. Music videos enabled artists to target the coveted and profitable eighteen- to thirty-four-year-old audience and create lasting iconic images, such as Madonna’s exposed midriff in “Lucky Star,” the animation in the Dire Straits/Sting video “Money For Nothing,” and the creative black-and-white visuals of a-ha’s “Take On Me.” MTV soon spawned its own suitably outrageous awards ceremony and offshoot networks, such as MTV2, VH-1, and VH-1 Classics. Rock artists such as Joan Jett, The Cars, David Bowie, and Van Halen, along with dance artists Janet Jackson, Paula Abdul, MC Hammer, and Prince capitalized on it, too. Advertisements were sandwiched between videos and featured artists exclaiming the tagline, “I want my MTV!” Early videos followed a few formulas, especially lip-synching and extensive choreography, which Madonna pioneered. Michael Jackson turned videos into plot-driven short films with 1983’s award-winning fourteen-minute “Thriller.” Madonna exploited the trend with her 1986 teen pregnancy story “Papa Don’t Preach.” By the early 1990s, MTV was moving toward more lucrative demographicspecific programming, incorporating regular news features, the long-running reality shows The Real World (1992) and Road Rules (1998), and peeks at celebrity homes with MTV Cribs. VH-1 Classics recycles the nostalgia by airing videos and decade-specific programs such as I Love the 80s. With the advent of the Internet, the form is not exclusive to television anymore, but music videos are still necessary for promotion and image-making. Those old enough to remember, however, still want their MTV.

You” and “This Used to Be My Playground.” Nearly all of Madonna’s albums have appeared on the Billboard charts, many of them respectably positioned. Even her 1983 debut Madonna peaked at number eight on the Billboard 200 and at number twenty on the R&B/hip-hop album chart. She followed that up with Like a Virgin, True Blue, and Like A Prayer, which all hit the number one slot on the Billboard 200 chart; subsequent releases such as 1990’s The Immaculate Collection and 1998’s Ray of Light hit number two. Music, released in 2000, hit number one on Billboard and became a top Internet and Canadian album, too. Her 2003 release American Life fared similarly well. Many of her songs immediately appeared on several different charts simultaneously, conﬁrming her immense appeal in multiple genres such as popular music, dance music, R&B, and Adult Contemporary. These songs include

255

256

Women Icons of Popular Music

“Holiday/Lucky Star,” which became a number one hit on the club play singles chart; 1985’s dance hit “Angel,” which appeared on ﬁve separate charts, including the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary chart; and the ballad “Crazy for You,” which went to number one on the Hot 100 and peaked at number two on the Adult Contemporary chart. The controversial but nonetheless commercial smash “Like a Virgin” gave her early presence on the R&B/hip-hop singles chart, peaking at number nine. Madonna has had eleven number one singles on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States in less than twenty years, starting with “Like a Virgin” in 1984 and ending with “Music” in 2000. Like a Virgin was the ﬁrst of her albums to hit the number one spot on the Billboard 200 and go platinum, with 1 million copies sold; to date, it has sold 10 million copies. Madonna has won six Grammy Awards: in 1991 for the Blond Ambition Live video, which won Best Music Video, Long Form; in 1998 the album Ray of Light nabbed Best Pop Vocal Album, its single “Ray of Light” won Best Dance Recording, and the single’s video won Best Music Video Short Form; in 1999, the song “Beautiful Stranger” won Best Song Written Speciﬁcally for Motion Picture or Television—it appeared in the ﬁlm Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me; and ﬁnally, in 2006, Confessions on a Dance Floor won Best Electronic/Dance Album. Madonna has sold tens of millions of records, and her fans are legendarily devoted. She has a strong gay and lesbian following because through her music, performances, and her employment of dancers, she suggests an open, inclusive approach to life, sexuality, and her career. Despite her appearance in or involvement with more than a dozen ﬁlms, her authorship of six children’s books, her clothing line for the H&M department store chain and another for children called English Roses, Madonna has proven she is still most successful as a performer. Because she is interested in innovation and because she has a history of being provocative, she is a regular in the pages of newspaper tabloids and celebrity weekly magazines both in her native United States and in her adopted home of England. In short, Madonna has been a reliably surprising contributor to the larger conversation of American culture for more than twenty years.

EARLY YEARS Madonna is named for her mother, Madonna Louise Firkin, a French-Canadian. Her father, Silvio “Tony” Ciccone, is a ﬁrst-generation American of Italian descent. She was the third child and the ﬁrst girl in the family after Anthony and Martin; three more children followed after her, named Paula, Christopher, and Melanie. Her name seems ironic because of the way in which she would push the boundaries of acceptable female cultural behavior. Later, she said, “I sometimes think I was born to live up to my name. How could I be

Madonna

anything else but what I am having been named Madonna? I would have either ended up a nun or this” (Cross 2007, 1). As a child, her nickname was “little nonnie” to distinguish her from her mother. Madonna’s background was strongly Catholic, with attendance at Mass during school hours and on Sundays comprising an essential part of her upbringing; she also went to parochial elementary schools. Her father is described in interviews as an unwavering moral force and a strict disciplinarian. Growing up in Michigan, Madonna was interested in dancing and showing off at family gatherings, as her extended family on both sides was rather large. Her grandparents did not speak English, and she said that her father wanted his children to have better opportunities than he had growing up. The family lived in Pontiac, Michigan, in a small house that could barely contain all six children until she was about ten years old. But the singular deﬁning moment of her life is arguably the death of her mother. On December 1, 1963, when Madonna was just ﬁve years old, her thirty-one-year-old mother died of breast cancer. Suddenly, she had to assume a lot of adult responsibilities by helping to care for her younger siblings. In a Time magazine article in 1985, she described her mother as “a very forgiving and angelic person,” who was so kind and gracious and never yelled, even though “we were really messy, awful kids” (Worrell 1985). Her mother’s death also spawned a love-hate dynamic between Madonna and her father, which she has documented in print and through her music, speciﬁcally the 1989 song “Oh Father.” The event sparked in her the need for control when so much was out of control, and by rebelling she tried to get her way to gain control over her life. She also used her natural intelligence to achieve straight As in school in the hopes that it would garner attention for her. When her father met and married Joan Gustafson in 1966, Madonna had a lot of trouble accepting it, and that, too, helped contribute to the modus operandi that came to deﬁne her career. At this point, she ofﬁcially became a difﬁcult child. Gustafson eventually adopted the children in 1969, but before that, she and Tony had two of their own children. In 1968, the family moved to Rochester Hills, Michigan, a more homogeneous, middle-class suburb than the mixed-race neighborhood of Pontiac. Madonna started to take dance lessons from the Rochester School of Ballet while attending Rochester Adams High School. In high school she was popular, ﬂirtatious, and had a reputation as being “fast,” which was mostly an act. Growing up with brothers made her more aggressive than most adolescent girls, and her relationship with her stepmother continued to be a thorn in her side. Madonna developed her artistic skills and acted in school plays in high school. She was always interested in being in the spotlight, and often said she wanted to be a movie star when she grew up. She admired Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Holliday, and even child actress Shirley Temple. Because she was prone to being outspoken, her father had tried to channel her energy into something productive and artistic such as piano lessons. She loved music—growing up she listened to a lot of Motown music—but disliked

257

258

Women Icons of Popular Music

piano lessons. She persuaded her father to let her take ballet, which she enjoyed. In 1976, she received a dance scholarship to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, thanks to her talent and the persuasive efforts of her dance teacher, Christopher Flynn, who also taught at the university. Early in her college career, she auditioned for a workshop at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York and was accepted. The experience changed her life: She decided to drop out of school and move to New York to pursue her career in dance, which infuriated her father. In July 1978, Madonna moved to New York. She told Ingrid Sischy of Interview magazine, a downtown New York publication dedicated to emerging and underground cultural scenes, “I knew I was going to suffer. I knew it was going to be hard. But I was not going back and that’s how it was, period” (Cross 2007, 15). Legend has it that she arrived in New York wearing her winter coat in July and with only $35 in her pocket, but friends have countered that narrative that Madonna has given in interviews, saying she had been saving up for months for the trip. Nevertheless, Madonna lived in squalor on the Lower East Side, working odd jobs and eventually earning a spot in the Pearl Lang Dance Company as Lang’s assistant. One day, she and Lang argued about a routine, and Madonna declared that she would be a rock star, despite the fact that she had never even sung at that point in her life. To earn money, she started posing in the nude for art students at the Art Students’ League in New York, which then led her to similar work for professional photographers such as Bill Stone and Martin Schreiber. She periodically took dance classes and auditioned for television shows, and sometime in 1979 landed a gig as a backup dancer and singer with Patrick Hernandez Revue, a disco group that is responsible for the hit “Born To Be Alive.” While on tour with the revue in Paris she received voice lessons, thanks to the revue’s managers, and they toured Europe for a bit. When she returned to New York, she moved in with musician and on-again/off-again boyfriend Dan Gilroy. He taught her how to play drums and guitar and they formed a group called the Breakfast Club at the end of summer 1980. At this point, she was starting to move away from the idea of a career in dance and look to a career in music. Later in 1980 she left the Breakfast Club and persuaded former boyfriend Stephen Bray, a drummer from Ann Arbor, to come to New York to join another emerging band. It was fortuitous for both of them: Bray and Madonna worked together on her early material, writing “Express Yourself,” “Into the Groove,” and “Papa Don’t Preach” several years later. Her ﬁrst demo tape was recorded with him in August 1981, and it contained “Everybody” and “Burning Up,” which Madonna wrote. All of the songs would become big hits for her. Madonna was starting to develop a reputation, and soon, based on the strength of her live performance at the club Max’s Kansas City with backup band Emmy, Gotham Records agent Camille Barbone signed her to a contract and became her agent (Cross 2007, 23). The two were inseparable. Barbone took

Madonna

259

Madonna under her wing and even gave her a parttime job cleaning houses for $100 a week. She also She stood out, quite. Her tried to set Madonna up with acting lessons, but the energy was really apparent. teacher found her unworthy of instruction. Barbone What direction she should was convinced otherwise, so she took action, ﬁred the put that energy in hadn’t been backup band, and set to work to promote Madonna. settled, but it was definitely Despite booking Madonna some gigs and taking her there. demo tape to labels, Barbone did not make progress —Stephen Bray, on first quickly enough for Madonna, who left the arrangemeeting Madonna ment just as Barbone was reportedly on the verge of inking a deal with Columbia Records. A demo tape ended in the hands of Mark Kamins, a producer and deejay at Danceteria in New York, who eventually got it to Sire Records, which reportedly offered her $15,000 for a two-single deal. Sire signed Madonna in early 1982, just before her twenty-fourth birthday. Kamins is responsible for producing her ﬁrst single, “Everybody,” which hit the club and dance charts when it was released in October 1982. She performed it at Danceteria, and the Sire executives in attendance who signed her realized they were onto something, so they created a video of the performance. “Everybody” hit number three on the dance charts and slipped into the Billboard Hot 100. The single “Physical Attraction” followed in 1983. It was time to start planning for her debut record. It was the song “Holiday,” released in June 1983, and its accompanying video featuring Madonna cavorting around in eye-catching fashions, that enabled her to break through to the mainstream pop world. The New York– based deejay John “Jellybean” Benitez took the song he discovered, which was written by Curtis Hudson and Lisa Stevens, and turned it into something suitable for Madonna as its producer. In July 1983, her self-titled debut came out featuring a remarkable string of catchy, danceable songs, from “Burning Up” to “Everybody” to “Holiday,” which became her ﬁrst Top 40 hit in October of that year, followed shortly by “Borderline” in March 1984, which peaked at number four on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart. Other noteworthy songs include “Lucky Star,” another song she wrote, which peaked at number four in the Hot 100. The achievement marked the beginning of a streak of seventeen consecutive Top 10 hits. Her strong initial success took everyone—the listening public, her label, and the critics—by surprise. The album itself peaked at number ﬁve, and despite their differences, she dedicated it to her father.

CAREER PATH Madonna’s career is unique for a number of reasons, the ﬁrst of which is perhaps the fact that she was met with nearly instant success once she released

260

Women Icons of Popular Music

music on a major label. She is not a trained singer or actress, yet she has made a career out of “acting” throughout her career—she’s taken on various roles as her image has changed somewhat from album to album. Her ability to create a compelling image trumps any technical or musical shortcomings: Her voice is not remarkable; it is thinner in the higher ranges and ﬁnds a more natural home in lower registers. In the music videos of the early part of her career, she is featured in several different outﬁts and is telling a story through her music and costumed characters. But her constantly evolving sense of style—at this point she was donning ripped ﬁshnets and an oversized cruciﬁx around her neck—and her ambition set her apart. Indeed, it is evident that Madonna stopped at nothing to accomplish her goals, even if it meant alienating friends, mentors, bosses, and lovers, in the move to the next big thing. Madonna was often dating the very person who could advance her career somehow; it was either shrewd or coincidental. When she appeared on the long-running American Bandstand with Dick Clark in 1984 and he asked her what she wanted to do when she grew up, she said, “Rule the world.” Such brazenness and shameless self-promotion may get you where you want, but there is usually a cost. Madonna, though, especially in the later years of her career, seemed to always run the risk of not being taken seriously, because she appears to have built her entire career around having fun, celebrating herself. “I mean, everything I do is sort of tongue in cheek,” she told Time magazine in 1985 (Worrell 1985). Some people, however, miss her sense of humor entirely. Fresh off the success of her self-titled debut, she set to work on the next album, 1984’s Like a Virgin, but also realized she needed someone with experience to help manage her career. John Benitez connected her with Freddy DeMann, who had worked with Michael Jackson. He was taken with her at their ﬁrst meeting, and their partnership lasted for the next ﬁfteen years. The mid- to late 1980s were proliﬁc for Madonna as her image became more sophisticated and the themes she dealt with became further developed. In the video for the album’s title song “Like a Virgin,” Madonna is wearing rosary beads around her neck and wriggles around on a gondola in Venice. The video’s action alternates between those images and images of her in a frilly, overstuffed wedding gown. Directed by Mary Lambert, who also directed “Borderline,” the “Like a Virgin” video caused much controversy. She performed the song at the MTV awards, during which she suggestively rolled around the ﬂoor in a white wedding dress. Her use of iconography is notorious, but, in contrast to what her critics contended, Madonna’s use of it did not feel sacrilegious to her. “I thought, ‘This is kind of offbeat and interesting.’ . . . When I went to Catholic schools, I thought the huge cruciﬁxes nuns wore around their necks with their habits were really beautiful” (Worrell 1985). Listening to the song, which is slower but still danceable, her voice is

I am ambitious, but if I weren’t as talented as I am ambitious, I would be a gross monstrosity. I am not surprised by my success because it feels natural.

Madonna

extremely high and girlish, almost as if she had inhaled helium before singing. For all its so-called controversy, “Like a Virgin” loved the airwaves, hitting number one on both the Hot 100 and Hot Dance Music/Club Play charts and nine on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles chart. Madonna followed it up with the hit “Material Girl,” which became an enormous hit on both dance music and the Hot 100 charts. The song is predicated on a fantasy of falling in love with a rich man (or perhaps more appropriately, falling in lust) and is a coy, tongue-in-cheek nod at the materialism that deﬁnes the early 1980s. In the video, Madonna is dressed like Marilyn Monroe in a hot pink strapless gown and long gloves, with glittering diamonds and a vintage hair style. The song and video, with its ﬂeet of blacksuited backup dancers/singers ﬂanking her, is an homage to “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend.” Madonna deliberately invites the comparison to her idol and also subverts the dominant paradigm about women in the music business. The video here shows her basking in the attention of men, and throughout her videos, she casts herself as the ultimate female object of desire. The men exist as props and reinforce her beauty and power; they are automaton-like and repeat the phrase “living in a material world” in a robotic monotone. In the choruses, her voice is high and girlish, but in the verses, when she assures us “We are living in a material world/And I am a material girl,” her voice drops to its more natural register. Along with “Like a Virgin,” “Material Girl” remains a deﬁnitive statement that she is remembered for, even though the rest of the album produced a few other dance-pop hits too, such as “Angel,” and “Dress You Up.” Like a Virgin hit number one on Billboard Top 200 and ten on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts. In 1985, Madonna had a busy, headline-grabbing year. Her album Like A Virgin had been released at the end of the previous year and had hit number one in December, remaining on the charts for six weeks. She had become an internationally known performer and celebrity. “Material Girl” became a hit in March, at which time she started her ﬁrst tour, with the group Beastie Boys offering opening act support. “Crazy For You” became her second number one single that May. It appeared in the successful movie Desperately Seeking Susan, in which Madonna starred. By the end of May, she had already sold 16 million singles and albums—a staggering success considering she had accomplished it in just a couple of years. In August, she married actor Sean Penn on her birthday. Around this time, Madonna started showing an interest in producing her work, too, and her work with Patrick Leonard, a songwriting collaborator, started in earnest with what would become her 1986 album, True Blue. He had a hand in writing some of the songs on True Blue, as did her co-writer Stephen Bray. The album marks a watershed in her career in that it gave the masses, the music critics, and her detractors all something different to talk about. The material shows an increasing depth of range, whether it’s an adult ballad “Live to Tell” (co-written with Leonard), which hit number one and was released in advance of the album, or sweet pop confections such as

261

262

Women Icons of Popular Music

“Jimmy Jimmy” and the title track, which recall 1960s girl groups, or the Spanish-inﬂuenced “La Isla Bonita.” True Blue is a spectacular success, selling more than 19 million copies worldwide since its release. It peaked at number one on the Billboard 200 chart and spawned ﬁve number one singles. The album’s most controversial second single, “Papa Don’t Preach,” ﬁnds her begging her father for his blessing and understanding as she cries “I’ve made up my mind/I’m keeping my baby.” Although the song rankled some people because it discusses out-of-wedlock pregnancy, the narrator wants to get married. “Papa Don’t Preach” is the ﬁrst of several songs in which Madonna seeks the approval of her stern father. The song signals that Madonna had become ready to tackle difﬁcult topics. “Papa Don’t Preach” became her fourth number one hit. Prior to its release Madonna said it was a “message song that everyone is going to take the wrong way. Immediately, they’re going to say I am advising every young girl to go out and get pregnant” (Holden 1986). She was right: Planned Parenthood decried it, saying it suggested “a path to permanent poverty” (Dullea 1986). In the 1980s, albums typically had more longevity than those in 2000—at least the commercially viable ones did. In early 1987, “Open Your Heart” became her ﬁfth number one song as it followed the release of “Papa Don’t Preach” and “La Isla Bonita,” the latter of which ﬁnds Madonna singing in Spanish and is the ﬁrst example of what would be a growing interest in Latin music. In the video, also directed by Mary Lambert, she is seen prostrating herself before a makeshift altar, praying, and dancing in an elaborate red and black ﬂamenco dress, looking out on the activity on the street and ultimately joining it. Leonard co-wrote the ballad “Live to Tell,” which hit number one, too. In the New York Times, Stephen Holden summed up the album, saying that “Madonna is still much more signiﬁcant as a pop culture symbol than as a songwriter or a singer. But the songs on True Blue are shrewdly crafted teenage and pre-teen-age ditties that reveal Madonna’s unfailing commercial interests. And her singing, which has been harshly criticized as a thin imitation of the 1960s girl-group sound, has strengthened” (Holden 1986). Holden’s observation is apt—in hits such as “Papa Don’t Preach,” she establishes the mood in the verses with a low, serious tone as she tells the story, and when it turns to the chorus, it becomes more pleading, higher and more urgent. In the pop song “True Blue” her voice stays high, but vocal loops play in the background with Madonna singing in lower registers. Those distinct voices allow her to demonstrate her range, but can also be perceived as a conscious choice to sound different on a deeper level, allowing layers of ideas or more than one persona to coexist within a song. Stage, Screen and the Club: Madonna Capitalizes on Her Skills Early in Madonna’s career it was clear that she wanted to be an actress and star in ﬁlms, too. During the 1980s she appeared in Desperately Seeking Susan

Madonna

(1985) and Shanghai Surprise (1986) with then-husband Sean Penn, and then took successful turns in Who’s That Girl? (1987) and Dick Tracy (1990) alongside Warren Beatty. Her starring role as Eva Perón in the 1996 ﬁlm Evita turned into one of her most noteworthy performances. Even though Who’s That Girl? and Shanghai Surprise were both box ofﬁce ﬂops, most of the soundtracks to ﬁlms she starred in often included her music, so they sold well. The soundtrack for Who’s That Girl?, which featured tracks from other artists, hit number seven on the Billboard 200. Even the title track, a new song for her, became a number one hit for Billboard Hot 100 and appeared on four other charts, hitting number two on the Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales. Her other new song for the record, “Causing a Commotion,” became a number one hit on both the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart and Hot Dance Music/MaxiSingles chart and number two on the Billboard Hot 100. I’m Breathless: Music From and Inspired By the Film Dick Tracy was released in 1990. Madonna appeared in the ﬁlm cast as Breathless Mahoney; she became romantically linked with Beatty during the ﬁlming. The album peaked at number two on the Billboard 200, and “Hanky Panky” hit nine on Hot Dance Music chart and ten on Billboard Hot 100. Madonna was building a case for her cross-platform appeal and attempting to maximize her music career via her ﬁlm roles. While she was occupied with acting, she capitalized on her strong dance following and released You Can Dance (1987), an album of remixes of her “Into the Groove,” “Where’s the Party,” and “Holiday.” Toward the end of the decade, her career started to shift. While Who’s That Girl? and You Can Dance kept audiences happy for a while, Madonna spent much of 1988 in the David Mamet Broadway play Speed-the-Plow. At this point she ﬁled, then withdrew, paperwork to divorce Penn. Their relationship was volatile, and he was protective, outspoken, and reportedly had a drinking problem. Finally, Penn and Madonna divorced in the beginning of 1989. When Like a Prayer was released in spring 1989, it signaled another shift, incorporating elements of pop, rock, gospel, and of course, dance. Some of the material suggested that Madonna was trying to more consistently exorcise some childhood demons, from “Promise To Try” (a song about her mother) and the haunting “Oh Father.” Like a Prayer became a number one hit, along with its title track. Three songs “Express Yourself,” “Cherish,” and “Keep It Together,” also made into the Top 10. Unsurprisingly, the album incited controversy. “Like a Prayer” is ultimately an uplifting gospel-pop song but its video, with images of burning crosses in the background as a dark-haired Madonna prances around in a dark slip dress, kissing an African American saint, caused an uproar. The video illuminates the song’s latent religious messages about prayer, love, and redemption, for example, the kissing is at best chaste. At the video’s end, the camera pulls away, and we see that this whole performance takes place on a stage. The curtain comes down, and the words “the end” appear, suggesting perhaps a morality play. Director Mary Lambert said that the song was “about ecstasy

263

264

Women Icons of Popular Music

and very speciﬁcally sexual ecstasy and how it relates to religious ecstasy.” Madonna has said that the video is about racial equality. Taken on its own, the song’s ﬁrst verse offers a double entendre: “I’m down on my knees/I want to take you there.” So shocking was her mixture of the sacred and profane that the Pope banned many of her appearances in Italy following the video’s release. The song became the number one single on the Billboard charts, and the album sold millions of copies in the United States and in Europe. Further transgression appears in the song “Express Yourself,” another hit from the album; in the futuristic, stylized video Madonna shocked audiences by grabbing her crotch in imitation of Michael Jackson. Toward the end of the 1980s, Madonna’s music started to become more complicated thematically. Her performances, too, in videos and in concert footage, show that her productions were becoming more complex. She and her new friend, the comedian and actress Sandra Bernhard, enjoyed fooling with the public with the impression that they were lovers. It was the beginning of her most sexually transgressive period, as the music and performances in the early 1990s would reinforce this and show her at her most experimental, campy, and gender-bending best. 1990s: More Movies, More Music, and Pushing the Envelope Madonna chronicled the Blonde Ambition Tour in 1990 with the release of the documentary ﬁlm directed by Alex Keshishian Truth or Dare. Its somewhat racy content garnered headlines and was noteworthy, among other reasons, for its no-holds-barred look at her life. We see her simulate masturbation on stage in one performance and romp around playfully with her cast of characters— her backup dancers, for example—in bed. Black and white segments show her life offstage and full-color is reserved for performance. We see her interact with backup dancers and singers, and it is not always a pretty sight. It is clear who is in control; when something goes wrong, the person responsible certainly hears about it. However, the 1990s also saw her spectacular dance hit “Vogue,” which was tacked onto I’m Breathless. Throughout her career, Madonna has borrowed heavily from disco, gay, and urban underground cultures—usually simultaneously. “Vogue,” which pays homage to a dance trend in gay clubs of posing as a model or celebrity, was no exception. The stylish video, shot in black and white, features well-dressed dancers of seemingly every ethnicity contorting their bodies in creative, jaunty poses. In the chorus, Madonna extols the values of the dance ﬂoor as a place to escape and be accepted. Indeed, for her, that’s what it was when she was a teenager. Because she was so aggressive, she developed a reputation but never really felt as though she ﬁt in. “I didn’t ﬁt in and that’s when I got into dancing. I shut off from all of that and I escaped” (Worrell 1985). The song was a smash hit worldwide and became her best-selling single to that point.

Madonna

265

The greatest hits compendium The Immaculate Collection was released at the end of 1990 and included To call me an antifeminist is one eyebrow-raising song, “Justify My Love.” The ludicrous. Some people have black-and-white video was directed by avant-garde said that I’m setting women Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Mondino, and it showed back 30 years. Well, I think Madonna and lesbians and transsexuals in sexually in the ’50s, women weren’t compromising positions. MTV banned it before it ashamed of their bodies. I even aired, but the attention worked: The video sold think they luxuriated in their 400,000 copies that Christmas. If people were offended, sexuality and being strong in they were not likely prepared for what would soon foltheir femininity. low. In early 1992 she signed a $60 million deal to create her own imprint with Warner Brothers called Maverick Records to manage her burgeoning creative interests. The 1992 album Erotica was released October along with her art book called Sex, full of black and white photographs that reﬂect on what Madonna considers sexy. The package deal was a double-punch. Writing in the Boston Globe, Matthew Gilbert said “[J]udging from the single, also titled ‘Erotica,’ the album will be dense with sexually playful, sado-masochistic lyrics. Over an irresistibly sultry dance groove, Madonna sings in a bedroom voice that recalls the cooings of Prince: ‘I only hurt the ones I love’ ” (Gilbert 1992). One must listen closely though, to discern much else through out the song, apart from its refrain “Erotic, erotic/ Put your hands all over my body.” The song is not too dissimilar from her massive hit “Justify My Love.” Both are evocative, provocative, but somewhat vague. When the video for “Erotica” was ﬁrst released, it was restricted to latenight viewing. She followed this up with January 1993’s release of the ﬁlm Body of Evidence, which almost got slapped with an NC-17 rating. Some critics, though, contend that although Sex was supposed to be titillating, as Matthew Gilbert of the Boston Globe noted, “There is little authentic surprise left” when it comes to Madonna (Gilbert 1992). Caryn James, writing in the New York Times, said “Madonna’s book is less the display of an erotic imagination than a clichéd catalogue of what the middle class—her target audience, after all—is supposed to consider shocking” (James 1992). The songs are somewhat cold, distant, and anonymous expressions of desire. Some critics thought it was meticulous and calculated, domineering and artiﬁcial. Madonna proved impervious to criticism again, as Erotica peaked at number two on the Billboard 200 chart; the title track hit number one on two dance music charts and number three on the Billboard Hot 100. And Sex sold 1 million copies within a week of its publication. The book and the ﬁlm, along with the Dangerous Game, which went straight to video, were all produced by Maverick. Madonna spent much of 1993 on the road with The Girlie Show, best described as a campy, cabaret-circus act with Madonna the burlesque ringleader; gone was the overt dominatrix persona of previous tours. The tour sold out its twenty destinations in the United States and overseas. Following the tour, she

266

Women Icons of Popular Music

got heavily involved with fashion, posing in a series of ads for Versace and modeling in a show for designer Jean-Paul Gaultier. Toward the end of 1994, she released Bedtime Stories, a tamer, more R&B-oriented release overall, with ballads, dance tracks, and collaborations with Sting, Herbie Hancock, Bjork, and Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds. Her private life was a mess, she was nearing forty, and so, to remain productive and relevant and to start a family and be happy, something had to change. After disastrous relationships with co-star Warren Beatty and others, including the outlandish basketball player Dennis Rodman, Madonna began a relationship with personal trainer Carlos Leon in 1994. She gave birth to their daughter Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon on October 14, 1996, but she and Carlos did not marry. Nor did they stay together for very long, parting ways sometime the following year. Madonna became pregnant again during the ﬁlming of Evita, for which she had the lead role of Eva Perón, the actress and wife of Argentinean dictator Juan Perón. Madonna had lobbied director Alan Parker for the role with a handwritten letter. The ﬁlm won one Oscar and was nominated for four others. For her role, Madonna won a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture—Comedy/ Musical; despite a handful of nominations for other projects, it is her only Golden Globe. Her interest in Latin culture continued with her growing collection of paintings, especially by the Spanish artist Frida Kahlo. Madonna worked with digital wizard producer William Orbit to create the March 1998 album Ray of Light. The result is a dance album that is somewhat processed and distorted, with Madonna dabbling into far Eastern sounds, rave music, and electronica. Ray of Light was a big success, debuting at number two. The title track hit number one on the hot dance music chart and fared well on the Top 40, the Hot 100, and other charts. The awardwinning video, directed by Jonas Akerlund, was remarkably interesting, with sped-up, speed-of-light images of average daily activities in a number of different cities. Thanks to its stellar material throughout—it produced ﬁve international hit singles—and the irresistibly catchy title track, Ray of Light marked her strong return to dance music, but with yet another new twist. It is generally regarded by critics as one of her most adventurous albums to date. It garnered nominations for six Grammy Awards and took home four—for Best Pop Album, Best Dance Recording, Best Short Form Music Video, and Best Recording Package. 2000 Onward: The Domestic, British Diva After she gave birth to son Rocco in 2000 and married the child’s father, British ﬁlm director Guy Ritchie, in December of that same year, Madonna seemed to be on a calmer path. Sometimes in interviews she would adopt a slight British accent, perhaps a result of living in London but possibly as an attempt to appear to be more respectable. As she has grown up, though, so have her actions.

Madonna

This decade has shown Madonna becoming increasingly protective of her children and somewhat willing to bow to pressure. Ray of Light was such a fantastic hit that it created pressure on Madonna to follow it with a work of equal accomplishment. Her 2000 album Music, with material co-written and co-produced mostly with French musician Mirwais Ahmadzai, incorporates some of the dance-based techno, pop, and house music of Ray of Light. In fact, Music debuted at number one on the album chart. Madonna had returned again to her dance music roots, hitting number one on top Internet, top Canadian, and Billboard 200 charts. Its title track ﬁnds her crying, as digital noises bleep and blip behind her, that “music makes the people come together,” as a reminder perhaps to herself and her audience. The effect is dirty but sophisticated with a casual energy that engages the ear. Additionally, the title track hit number one on four separate charts and made number two on Top 40 Mainstream and Top 40 Tracks. Music was nominated for a Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for the title track. After an eight-year hiatus, Madonna returned to the road with the sell-out Drowned World Tour. In late 2001, she released a DVD of the tour and her second greatest hits album, GHV2, which peaked at number seven on the Billboard 200. When it was time for her ninth studio album, controversy continued to follow her, albeit in a new form—political. With the 2003’s album American Life, Madonna hit her ﬁrst legitimate commercial stumbling block since her career began; most of the songs feature hackneyed, borrowed sentiments better expressed the ﬁrst time around. Her song “American Life” is a send-up of American consumerism and culture. It is a narrative, with Madonna singing a ﬁrst person declaration “I live the American dream,” and she goes on to rap about her soy latte, mini-Cooper, personal chef, and trainer, making for an embarrassing but honest examination of privilege. The cover of the album is a graphical representation of Madonna wearing a beret, with the Russian Constructivist red, black, and white colors strongly featured, suggesting a crusading outsider looking in on American culture. Even before its ofﬁcial release, the video for “American Life” was widely criticized for its violent images of war. Madonna withdrew it before its release. Instead, she created a tamer video, with her singing in front of ﬂags from around the world. The Madonna of twenty years ago would not have acquiesced to such pressure; it was a surprising move for someone who has made a career out of shock tactics. Perhaps because of her own growing spirituality through Kabbalah, she was seeking a deeper meaning. American Life failed to produce a Top 10 single. The song’s relative failure to connect shows that the public does not a want a didactic Madonna who makes sly tongue-in-cheek references to her own celebrity; it is not a believable Madonna. Three more singles were released, but none of them charted noticeably well in the United States, although they did ﬁnd some traction on European and Canadian radio.

267

268

Women Icons of Popular Music

In 2005, she released Confessions On A Dance Floor, co-produced with Stuart Price. The supporting tour played to a worldwide crowd of more than 1 million people. The Confessions tour grossed $260 million, making it one of the top-grossing tours by a female artist. Its set design bore an equestrian theme with her now de rigueur S&M overtones. The album itself is an homage to her disco and dance music–loving past, with a techno twist. The single “Hung Up,” which samples the band Abba, did well on the dance music charts, but overall Confessions does not add a noticeable amount of new material to the Madonna pantheon. Instead it gives a nod to her own musical history. Nevertheless, it peaked at number one on a handful of charts, including top electronic, Internet albums, and the Billboard 200. The DVD released in conjunction with the album earned her a Grammy Award nomination for Best Long Form Video. She followed that up with I’m Going to Tell You a Secret, an album and documentary package that was released in 2006 from her 2004 Re-Invention tour; its content, a smattering of some of her biggest hits over the course of her career, seems like a time capsule. In 2007, Madonna released The Confessions Tour, a live album recorded at London’s Wembley Arena. As the decade has progressed, her music seems to have become less relevant and distinct, but in December 2007, she was nominated to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, thus sealing her place in music history.

MISSION, MOTIVATION, PROCESS For good or for ill, most of the public understands Madonna not so much as a great songwriter or singer but a dancer, actress, businesswoman, and performer with keen instincts and sharp insights that help guide her toward the right collaborators and projects. She is especially adept at picking up on trends. She has historically been able to recognize what trend will play in the Midwest, even though it’s over in New York. Madonna not only has vision but she surrounds herself with people who can help make that vision come to life. She has been fortunate to ﬁnd the right people at the right time and form key relationships with those who can and do advocate for her. That ambition and attention to detail manifests itself in how she takes care of herself. By most accounts, Madonna is the deﬁnition of discipline; she does not eat meat, she rarely drinks, does not smoke or do any drugs. She trains every day and is 100 percent in control of her image. A dancer’s sense of discipline and rigor has helped her achieve her goals, but perhaps in excess, by many accounts—Madonna’s extreme need for control dominates her life. She has reportedly refused to sing the national anthem at the Super Bowl, not because she is not patriotic or didn’t want to but because she could not control the sound and lighting systems. It is also known that Madonna has kept the temperatures in arenas and stadiums warmer than perhaps summer concertgoers would have liked to protect her voice. Biographer Andrew

Madonna

269

Morton told of an instance in which she snatched her high school yearbook out of her publicist Liz How far is the image from Rosenberg’s hands prior to her appearance on Satur- me? It’s about 20 steps away. day Night Live, a move that suggests Madonna wants to put her past far behind her. More recent attempts at spin control came in summer 2008, during the press tour for her brother Christopher Ciccone’s book Life With My Sister Madonna, when Rosenberg is rumored to have had some of his television appearances cancelled. Madonna said that as a child she always felt different, but growing up in the middle of many brothers and sisters forced her to distinguish herself. Madonna has been driven since she was a child, and her ambition and desire for control seem to be her motivational tools. “I always thought of myself as a star, though I never in my wildest dreams expected to become this big,” she said in a 1986 interview, after just a few years of multiplatinum sales (Holden 1986). Little did she know how explosive her career would truly become in the next twenty years. Her singular name indeed distinguishes her, but one may question how different she truly is at this point, now that she has gained such international fame and wealth. Paradoxically, she admitted to struggling with feelings of inadequacy and the need to be remembered long after she has gone. In 1991 she told a reporter she was driven by “this horrible fear of being mediocre” (Cross 2007, 32). That’s not likely. Some academic writers have argued that she has become a postmodern icon for the ability to transcend and blur the lines between high and low culture. As someone with a love of visual media—art, photography, paintings, video, and television—she is an artist who came of age during the music video age and helped deﬁne it. She knows what she wants. While she was working on the soundtrack for the ﬁlm Dick Tracy, she collaborated with songwriter Andy Paley, who has also spent time working with Paul Simon and Brian Wilson. Paley described her working for hours at a time, ignoring other things. Others have attested to her being difﬁcult, but her focus is so exceptional it must be difﬁcult to keep up. Madonna’s process is performance, so a discussion of her concerts is essential. They are elaborately staged and themed productions with multiple sets and costume changes; they are never entirely the same from one album tour to the next. Her concerts almost always sell out. But Madonna is not necessarily interested when her manager tells her how quickly a concert has sold out; she is more interested in whether she is satisﬁed with it as an artistic achievement. However, her artistic nature is balanced by her business sense, which powerful as it is, does take second place to her creativity. Like Michael Jackson, Prince, and others of the early MTV generation, Madonna uses performance as a laboratory for her art. Her monumental success suggests a dependency on that audience; each new album and tour is an opportunity to invite her audience to participate in the process. Madonna does not typically treat a song live the same way from one tour to the next. For example, the

270

Women Icons of Popular Music

Girlie Show’s campy androgyny and cabaret-cum-burlesque found her singing “Like a Virgin” in the most unexpected way; as an accordion-tinged waltz. Dressed in top hat and tails she sang with a German accent, à la Joel Grey in Cabaret. When she performed “Vogue” at the 1990 MTV awards, she and her dancers came out in eighteenth-century attire, Madonna in an elaborate dress complete with hoop skirt and Marie Antoinette wig. With such complex and engaging visuals at every reincarnation, Madonna boasts loyal fans who repeatedly attend her concerts.

LEGACY AND OTHER INTERESTS Just as Madonna’s image has vacillated between a good girl/bad girl image, the public and the media have also vacillated on their opinion of her. She has explored many interests, from writing six children’s books to promoting the healing beneﬁts of yoga and abandoning Catholicism for the Jewish mystical beliefs of Kabbalah. She has also designed a line of clothing called “M by Madonna” for the chain department store H&M. She has been alternately declared one of the world’s most intriguing or beautiful people, depending on the publication, and has also gained notoriety as “most fashionable” or “worst dressed” depending on who’s judging. She tends to be divisive—most people feel one way or another about her. Nowadays her actions are not nearly as controversial, but Madonna is always interested in something new—a tendency that has romantically linked her to actors, directors, artists, musicians, bodyguards, dancers, and producers. But as she’s gotten older she has turned her attention toward matters larger than herself and remains married with children. In fall 2003 she published her ﬁrst children’s book, English Rose, followed by ﬁve more, all of which have been well received and sold well. In October 2006, Madonna and Ritchie adopted thirteen-month-old Malawi child, David Banda. She announced her plans to improve the lives of orphans in the country through her Raising Malawi initiative, a charity she created, along with plans to raise $3 million toward the cause, which is designed to help with AIDS relief and expand on her Kaballah beliefs. Throughout her career, she has appeared in a little over a dozen ﬁlms. Reviews of her appearances in the early ﬁlms were mostly unkind. Her performances were widely panned in such movies as Shanghai Surprise in the earlier part of her career, as well as to The Next Best Thing (2000) and Swept Away (2002), which was all but swept away at the box ofﬁce. But her work in the ensemble-driven 1992 comedy A League of Their Own and also playing opposite Warren Beatty in Dick Tracy fared much better; critics and box ofﬁce receipts were much kinder to her. Her role as Susan in Desperately Seeking Susan was spirited—largely a reﬂection of herself. When she took the lead role of Eva Perón in the ﬁlm Evita (1996), it undoubtedly resulted in some

Madonna

snickering and some initial displeasure by Argentineans themselves, but critics and the box ofﬁce generally responded well. In 2007, it was reported that her ﬁlm Desperately Seeking Susan would have its stage debut in London’s West End in October. In April 1992, Madonna formed a multimedia empire called Maverick, as a testament to her approach to commerce and art. By the time Maverick was established, however, Madonna already had set up a number of companies to deal with her music and record royalties (Boy Toy), ﬁlm and video productions (Siren Films), and live performance contracts (Music Tours, Inc.), so she was no stranger to business. The name is appropriate, as it relates to her idea of bucking the system, doing the opposite of what is conventionally expected, and positioning herself as an outsider. In 2004, however, Madonna sold her shares of the Maverick label to Warner Brothers after a dispute. In late 2007, she abandoned the major label system altogether and signed a ten-year deal with LiveNation, the concert promotion company, in what some writers have termed a “360 degree” deal to handle music, touring, promotion, ﬁlm, television, and other projects. Despite the image propelled by the self-declared “material girl” in her hit 1980s song, the song was really a sly, knowing wink to the culture and not a personal manifesto. In short, it was a role to play. In her business dealings, Madonna is frugal, prudent, and shrewd. She downplays much of her business dealings and her philanthropic efforts, despite the fact that she is regular donor to AIDS charities and a quiet donor to a charity for breast cancer. Madonna has also reportedly donated millions toward a new Kabbalah school for children and has a charity called Spirituality for Kids, which is part of the Kabbalah Center. Subsequent to the release of Ray of Light, she established the Ray of Light Foundation as a charitable fund that enables her to donate to some of her favorite causes; in the past she has donated to the ACLU, The Volunteers of America, and the Ronald McDonald House, along with millions to the Kabbalah Center. She was one of the ﬁrst recording artists to donate concert proceeds toward relief funds to beneﬁt victims of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Throughout her career Madonna’s music has allowed her to explore the seemingly inﬁnitesimal variations of her good girl/bad girl image. Her music has also enabled other female artists to apprehend control over their own sexuality as a tool in the promotion of their music, image, and career. For Madonna, though, such image cultivation is carefully considered and always with strong purpose and artistic intent—qualities that truly make her an icon.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Madonna. Sire, 1983 Like a Virgin. Sire, 1984

271

272

Women Icons of Popular Music

True Blue. Sire, 1986 Like a Prayer. Sire, 1989 The Immaculate Collection. Sire, 1991 Ray of Light. Maverick/Warner Bros., 1998 Music. Maverick/Warner Bros., 2000 Confessions on a Dance Floor. Maverick/Warner Bros., 2005

FURTHER READING Carpenter, Teresa. “What’s It Like Being ‘Mom’ to Madonna?” The Independent (London) (October 12, 1992). Connelly, Christopher. “Madonna Goes All the Way.” Rolling Stone (November 22, 1984). Cross, Mary. Madonna: A Biography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007. Dullea, Georgia. “Madonna’s New Beat is a Hit, But Song’s Message Rankles.” New York Times (September 18, 1986). Fouz-Hernandez, Santiago, and Freya Jarman-Ivens (eds.). Madonna’s Drowned World: New Approaches to Her Cultural Transformations, 1983–2003. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2004. Gilbert, Matthew. “Playing the Shock Market, Madonna is About to Launch a Multimedia Line of Product That Is Her Most Risque Yet. Are We Still Buying It?” Boston Globe (October 11, 1992). Harrington, Richard. “Madonna.” Washington Post (May 26, 1985). Holden, Stephen. “Madonna Goes Heavy on Heart.” New York Times (June 29, 1986). James, Caryn. “The Empress Has No Clothes.” New York Times (October 22, 1992). Morton, Andrew. Madonna. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001. Madonna. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. See www.madonna.com. O’Brien, Lucy. “She’d Do Anything To Be A Star.” Sydney Morning Herald (September 29, 2007). O’Dair, Barbara. “Bedtime Stories. Review.” Rolling Stone 697 (December 15, 1994). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/madonna/albums/album/87081/ review/5941052/bedtime_stories. Raitliff, Ben. “American Life. Review.” Rolling Stone 922 (May 15, 2003). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/madonna/albums/album/273997/review/ 6067443/american_life. Us Magazine. “Madonna Files Adoption Papers. Us Magazine online (October 12, 2006). Available at www.usmagazine.com/node/2709. V, Davis. “Madonna’s Men: Stepping Stones To Stardom.” Sunday Mail (Queensland) (March 9, 1986). Walters, Barry. “Music. Review.” Rolling Stone 851 (October 12, 2000). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/madonna/albums/album/226574/review/ 6067634/music. Worrell, Denise. “Now: Madonna on Madonna.” Time (May 27, 1985).

AP/Wide World Photos

Sarah McLachlan

274

Women Icons of Popular Music

OVERVIEW Characterized by ethereal vocals, contemplative and poetic lyrics, atmospheric keyboards, and liberal use of piano and acoustic guitar, Sarah McLachlan and her music permeated popular culture throughout the 1990s, starting with the triple platinum–selling album Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. McLachlan’s career trajectory demonstrated that there was a largely untapped audience— female as well as male—who appreciated her quietly strong but decidedly female-centric perspective. After her debut album, 1988’s Touch McLachlan toured tirelessly during the most successful years of her career. On tour and through her music and album art, McLachlan’s persona attracted both male and female fans. She brought a genuine warmth to her performance presence, and her clothing on stage, characterized by sparkles and glitter, contributed to her otherworldly image; her own beauty helped, too. Her silky soprano voice scales a melody effortlessly, and her skills with the piano and guitar give her some degree of versatility as a performer and composer. Additionally, the fact that nearly all of her album covers feature a typeface that looks like her handwriting and that the images almost always appear as though they have been photographed through a gauzy, hazy ﬁlter contribute to that vibe. Her songs, with their predominant emotional content, are unmistakably hers—so much so, however, that by the time her album Afterglow was released in 2003, many critics thought that she was starting to repeat herself. Sarah McLachlan as a performer is probably most synonymous and most remembered for her contribution to the music industry in the form of a tour she conceived of called Lilith Fair (see sidebar), named after the rabbinical ﬁgure in the Bible believed to have been Adam’s ﬁrst wife. She came up with the idea in 1996 and it ran for three successive summers, 1997 through 1999. McLachlan is probably responsible for exposing millions of concertgoers to female musicians who previously may have been unfamiliar or obscure— whose voices had not been heard before on such a large and impressive scale. Although designed for women artists of many different genres to come together and tour across the Untied States and Canada, Lilith Fair created a lasting impact and subtly changed the way the music industry thought of female artists. It also inspired a wave of signings of any artist who even remotely sounded like McLachlan herself. In her wake, a number of artists gained critical and commercial attention, including Dido, Rachael Yamagata, Fiona Apple, Regina Spektor, and Nellie McKay. McLachlan is on the opposite end of the spectrum from sensitive, introspective piano-playing female artists like Tori Amos, who strives to do something different with every new song. McLachlan is more likely to write a song that touches on commonly understood metaphors—storms, ﬁre, and the darkness of night—as ways to explore and chart the depths of her emotions.

Sarah McLachlan

Lilith Fair: A Festival for Female Musicians The touring festival Lilith Fair, the brainchild of singer Sarah McLachlan, brought together more than 2 million people during its three-year history (1997 to 1999) of tours in the United States, Canada, and London, England. It also inspired several live albums’ worth of material and helped propel forward the careers of many aspiring female artists. Named from the medieval Jewish legend that Lilith was Adam’s first wife and was expelled from the Garden of Eden because she would not subordinate herself to him, the festival consisted entirely of female artists or female-fronted bands. One dollar of every ticket was donated to a local women’s charity in each market of the tour, raising more than $7 million. Organizations such as The Breast Cancer Fund; Rape, Abuse, & Incest Network (RAINN); LIFEbeat; Planned Parenthood; Global Exchange; National Organization for Women (NOW); and Amnesty International either received donations from and/or participated with information booths at concerts. By its final year, Lilith Fair also incorporated a songwriting contest and a literary booth with books by women writers. More than 100 different artists performed in the tour’s three years, such as Indigo Girls, Sheryl Crow, Martina McBride, Nelly Furtado, Queen Latifah, Emmylou Harris, Chrissie Hynde, Suzanne Vega, Luscious Jackson, and Natalie Merchant, along with rising artists from different genres, such as Dido, Garrison Starr, Cibo Matto, Beth Orton, and Susan Tedeschi. The festival created an indelible mark on popular music. Its grassroots, progressive approach appealed to aging hippies and the lineup appealed to their children. Lilith Fair created a sense of inclusiveness that had been largely absent from the earlier part of the grunge-rock, male-dominated decade and undoubtedly made possible the nonprofit, worldwide LadyFest, which started in 2000. In 2003, women dominated the list of Best New Artist Grammy nominations.

McLachlan’s debut, Touch, peaked at 139 on the Billboard 200, no small feat for an artist from Canada with only a small, independent, relatively unknown label backing her. Solace, released in 1992, peaked at number eight on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart and 167 in the Billboard 200. When Fumbling Towards Ecstasy was released in 1994, it hit number one on the Heatseekers chart and ﬁfty on the Billboard 200. The success of Fumbling Towards Ecstasy launched her career in the United States. It went gold by August 1994, a mere six months after its release. Eventually it went on to become a multiplatinumselling album (over 3 million to date), and at the time it was her best-selling record. Fumbling set the stage for her future success, as McLachlan’s albums subsequently have occupied number one positions or peaked somewhere in the top ten of a variety of Billboard charts both in the United States and

275

276

Women Icons of Popular Music

Canada. For instance, Surfacing was number two on the Billboard 200 and number one on the Top Canadian Albums chart; Mirrorball made number one on the Top Internet Albums chart, number two on Top Canadian Albums, and number three on the Billboard 200. Her record with Billboard singles is even more impressive; between 1992 and 2004 a dozen of her songs have landed in the Top 10, and two of those songs, “Angel” and “Fallen,” hit number one. McLachlan has won three Grammy Awards: for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for the song —on recording Solace “Building a Mystery” from 1997’s Surfacing; Best Pop Instrumental Performance for “Last Dance” in 1998; and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for “I Will Remember You” from 1999’s Mirrorball. She also won a nomination for Best Short Form Music Video for “World on Fire” in 2004. In her home country, she has been nominated for nineteen Juno Awards (the Canadian equivalent of a Grammy Award) and won eight of them, including one in 1992 for Best Female Vocalist of the Year and two in 2004 for Pop Album of the Year (Afterglow) and Songwriter of the Year, an honor she shared with album producer Pierre Marchand, who co-wrote several songs on Afterglow including the number one hit “Fallen” along with “World on Fire” and “Stupid.” With legions of fans in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, as well as around the world, McLachlan has established a ﬁrm place in the growing format of adult alternative pop. She is the rare combination of international star and well-respected artist and songwriter—a fact that shows that it is still indeed possible to be consistently successful, commercially and critically. Her albums have sold 26 million copies worldwide since her recording career started in 1988 with Touch, and she has been proﬁled in cover stories for Rolling Stone, Time, and Entertainment Weekly magazines.

Making this record was the best musical education I’ve had. And right now, I’m as happy as I’ve ever been because of that, because making music is what I want to do. I don’t need to sell a million records to feel satisfied.

EARLY YEARS McLachlan grew up in a suburb of Halifax, Nova Scotia, as the youngest of three children to her American marine biologist father Jack McLachlan and her mother Dorice, who put aside her own academic aspirations to support her husband’s professional pursuits. McLachlan’s relationship with her mother was atypical in terms of the parent-child or even mother-daughter dynamic, as she often served as her mother’s chief conﬁdant. Playing such a role exposed her to the consequences of sacriﬁce—pain and solitude and regret—which created an indelible imprint on her own sensibility as a child, and later, a budding musician. McLachlan has said that her mother’s unhappiness—she said

Sarah McLachlan

she watched her mom not live out her own dreams—provided motivation to do the opposite and follow her heart to live out her dreams. When McLachlan was in her mid-twenties, however, her mother went back to school to pursue a Master’s in English Literature. McLachlan received vocal training as well as guitar and classical piano lessons as a child—twelve years of guitar, six years of piano, and ﬁve years of voice—and found solace in literature and music. Despite all this training, she admitted she was never completely passionate about classical music as a child. Predictably, when she became a teenager she became more interested in pop music, writing her ﬁrst song, “Out of the Shadows,” in early 1987. Her parents started to worry about her when she started hanging out with the misﬁt, punk-rock kids and high school dropouts during these years. She supported herself by waitressing and doing other restaurant work during this time. At the age of seventeen, she was singing in a band called October Game. At her very ﬁrst show as the singer for this band, Mark Jowett, a representative for the small Canadian label Nettwerk, spotted her. He had been touring Canada with his own band, Moev, and he wanted her to sing in his band and offered her a contract. At the time, McLachlan had never even written a song, much less recorded any material. She was caught off guard and so were her parents. “My parents freaked out, and said ‘no way.’ I hadn’t ﬁnished high school,” she said. “So I kind of forgot about it” (Sculley 1994). Subsequently, McLachlan attended the Nova Scotia School of Design, where she studied art and played in a new wave rock band. In 1987, two years after Jowett initially approached her, Nettwerk president Terry McBride offered her a ﬁve-year deal so she could release a solo album. Her parents relented and gave their blessing for her to move to the Canadian West Coast, happy to see that she was happy and able to make a living. McLachlan relocated to Vancouver and recorded her debut Touch, which was released in 1988 when she was only nineteen. She thought she could return to school someday, but the music opportunity did not seem like it would present itself again. Recording her ﬁrst album was not an easy process—the whole thing felt foreign for McLachlan. Instead of looking for songs, she had to write all the tracks for the album, which was a feat at this point in her life. The ten songs are largely lush keyboard-oriented orchestrations, calling to mind perhaps her most obvious inﬂuence, Kate Bush, but without the loose, soaring vocals that she would later develop in subsequent albums. The record was mostly forgotten once she became extremely successful; most diehard fans, though, went back and bought it. Still, listeners can detect a sense of yearning that would pervade most of the rest of her oeuvre in songs like “Vox” and “Steaming.” Touch’s success, though, caught the attention of Arista Records, which signed her for international distribution. Touch eventually reached gold status—it sold more than 50,000 copies in Canada—and received worldwide release in 1989. Receiving that worldwide release was quite an accomplishment for a relatively young, unknown, and untested artist to be signed for international

277

278

Women Icons of Popular Music

distribution by a label known for making a tremendous star out of the powerful R&B singer Whitney Houston. But McLachlan had surprisingly good record sales for a new artist and the backing of the Canadian press, perhaps eager for their own personal answer to British singer Kate Bush, which showered her music with adjectives such as “angelic,” “soaring,” and “spell-binding.” She admitted a certain naiveté at the time of her debut when people expected an singer as ethereal as her music but instead met a talented, unprepossessing young musician. The pressure to create a strong sophomore effort was keenly felt, so in response McLachlan started writing. She also started gathering names of and vetting potential producers. Enter Pierre Marchand, who would become her sole producer for nearly the entirety of her recording career. He surprised her by sending a copy of his own music, which appealed to her need to work with a musician instead of an engineer. Two years after her debut album and after much time spent in the studio, McLachlan released Solace. The eleven songs show evidence of her burgeoning songwriting skills. The ﬁrst song, “Drawn to the Rhythm,” offers a subtle glimpse of her style: acoustic guitar, strong percussion, ethereal keyboards, and a singular use of an unusual instrument—in this case, the billatron. Produced by Pierre Marchand, who also ﬁgures prominently on keyboards, guitar, and organ, as well as a songwriter, the album found a cult-like audience in the United States on college campuses and expanded her audience signiﬁcantly in Canada, too. All Music Guide’s Kelly McCartney called Solace (1992) “at once comforting, mysterious, expansive, timeless, and familiar,” and a “superior collection of tunes” (McCartney). Other similar reviews meant that McLachlan had avoided the common sophomore jinx that occurs after an artist breaks through with a strong debut album. The album spawned a modest hit—it peaked at number four on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart—with the melodic, seductive “Into the Fire,” a synthesizer-driven song that showcased her soaring soprano front and center, a burbling bass, lush keyboard, and metaphysical subject matter. Read within the context of her emergence as a solo female artist in her early twenties, the song feels like a gentle assertion of one’s independence, an embrace of life’s pleasure and pain, and a show of courage to walk “into the ﬁre” of life, love, and, perhaps, her quickly changing career. Indeed, McLachlan learned much during the process of making the record with Marchand. Other songs on the album showcase her deeply introspective bent. “I Will Not Forget You” attempts to capture a moment in a romantic reverie and evokes an open, warm sound via percussion, piano, and acoustic bass. In the coming-of-age, growing pains song “Home” she sings in third person about a child with a dream, thinking of home with much anger and lamenting “she didn’t think there was anything wrong/With wanting a life that she could call

To me, music is a gift . . . I don’t know how to do anything else; music has always been the way for me to express what matters in my life.

Sarah McLachlan

her own.” A similar loss of innocence is contemplated in “Shelter” with lyrics that ﬁnd her vowing, “I will do all that I can do” and a chorus that ﬁnds her crying, “Shelter, give them shelter from the coming storm.” The album was not entirely replete with serious, navel-gazing thoughts. McLachlan created a more soulful, syncopated cover of the Donovan song “Wear Your Love Like Heaven.” Reﬂecting on her changes since those ﬁrst two albums, McLachlan was taken aback to how much she sounds like a pitiful victim. Growth never felt so good.

CAREER PATH Despite what its title suggests, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, which was released on October 22, 1993, was anything but a fumble. With a dozen songs that work together seamlessly, Fumbling is one of those rare things: a completely cohesive album. By the end of 1994, the album had reached platinum status and spent sixty-two weeks on the Billboard charts. Overall, Fumbling is a delicate balance between darkness and light, of hopelessness and redemption, and it illustrates McLachlan’s growth as a person through the process of making her ﬁrst two records. This album moved McLachlan out of her comfort zone as it experiments with more diverse textures such as the addition of electric guitar or organ. The harder sound is a lush counterpoint to her intelligent, lyrical sensibility. “Possession” became a modest hit, which helped propel the album’s sales and attract a wider audience than McLachlan’s work had previously entertained. The song relates a dark story of love as told through the eyes of a stalker, an experience McLachlan took from her own life. The haunting nature of the subject matter, the raggedy guitar sound, a pronounced bass, and a slightly creepy chorus that gives voice to the stalker’s fantasies made the song a gateway for many listeners. “Possession” hit number fourteen on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and became such a mainstay that even three years after its ﬁrst appearance, it still garnered plenty of airplay on radio. The song helped skyrocket her touring career, too: Within just a year and a half, McLachlan had graduated from bars and small theaters to big theaters and amphitheaters during the tour in support of Fumbling. Some of the album’s dark moments include “Hold On,” which tells the story of a woman who realizes her ﬁancé has AIDS—the piercing opening line is “Hold on, Hold on to yourself/This is going to hurt like hell.” McLachlan wrote the song after watching a documentary about that very topic. “Good Enough” is a gut-wrenching ballad in which the singer tries to please an impossible, unavailable lover. The song reached number sixteen on the Modern Rock Tracks. McLachlan told Billboard that it took a while for her to determine what the song was about, exactly. “It was one of the most ambiguous

279

280

Women Icons of Popular Music

to me, for the longest time . . . I have learned a lot from it in different ways.” She described it as a ﬁctional tale of how “people can get out of touch with themselves and the people they have relationships with, and it’s about the patterns that are created” (Boehlert 1994). She said the outsider in the chorus is stepping in, trying to encourage one of the two people to break the bad habits. And the painful searching of “Circle” dances around the issue of control and loss of individuality in a destructive romance, asking “[W]hat kind of love is this that keeps me hanging on/despite everything it’s doing to me?” There are moments of lightness, however, and signs of musical growth; it is apparent that McLachlan was ﬁnding some conﬁdence and peace with herself. She had also found herself in a loving relationship, too. In the title track, McLachlan asserts, that no matter what her emotions, tears or even rage, she won’t fear them or the love that comes with them. Perhaps she was giving herself permission to be herself as she says goodbye to the dampening sense of her mother’s life choices. That soul-searching process resulted in these subtle, beautiful dozen songs that examine the unjust way that women are objectiﬁed and subjugated. Along with McLachlan’s sense of peace came the ability to write songs that reﬂected a wider emotional palette. “Elsewhere” is a self-afﬁrming celebration of love and a validation of one’s dreams and desires. McLachlan declares, “I believe this is heaven to no one else but me/And I’ll defend it as long as I can be left here to linger in silence.” In the sweet, melodically lilting song “Ice Cream” McLachlan declares that “your love is better than ice cream” and “your love is better than chocolate” as then-boyfriend and soon-to-be husband Ashwin Sood gently brushed a drumbeat to propel the song. The innocent and simple “Ice Cream” quickly became a concert favorite, often showing up in the encore. In some ways, the song represented a breakthrough for her since she tended to write from sadness. McLachlan also beneﬁted from the good relationship she had with her label, Nettwerk. In an interview in April 1994, less than a year after the release of Fumbling, McLachlan reﬂected on those early years of her career and the pivotal role Nettwerk played in helping her ﬁnd her way to discover a musical as well as personal identity. She acknowledged her good fortune and said that she thought if a major label had signed her, “they would have squelched me . . . because I had no leg to stand on and say ‘I want to be like this’ ” (Sculley 1994). Fans who had been with her for several years and had bought Fumbling on its ﬁrst release grew impatient waiting for the next studio album but were somewhat sated by two interim releases. The Freedom Sessions arrived ﬁrst in April 1995. It is an album of seven alternate takes from Fumbling, available in what was at the time a special and new CD-ROM format complete with videos and voiceovers. The album had “the distinction of being the ﬁrst CDROM disc ever to chart on the inﬂuential Billboard Top 200 Albums chart,” with 250,000 copies sold within a mere two months of its release (Howell 1996). Next, fans were treated to Rarities, B-Sides and Other Stuff in June 1996.

Sarah McLachlan

Rarities featured a live cover of Billie Holiday’s “Gloomy Sunday” and a studio version of Joni Mitchell’s song “Blue,” along with remixes of “Possession” and “Fear.” Such stellar covers and remixes prove how well McLachlan can make any song her own as she ﬁlters it through her rich voice. These albums gave fans something to buy and bought McLachlan, who was exhausted, some time off. She had toured tirelessly, spending two and a half years on the road, followed by six months of rest at her home in Vancouver. Although she admittedly had small pieces and bits of songs, some verses and choruses, they had not yet become full-ﬂedged creations. Fumbling Toward Multimillion Album Sales Early on, before the release of Surfacing, McLachlan told the New York Times pop music writer Neil Strauss that the songs seemed “more straight ahead,” and perhaps that is the truth. It’s probably no accident that Surfacing, which appeared after Fumbling and was released in the midst of Lilith Fair tour during the summer of 1997, is currently McLachan’s best-selling album to date, with 8 million copies sold in the United States alone. It was certiﬁed gold just two months later, in September, and eight-times platinum by 2001, some ﬁve years after its release. On her Web site, McLachlan described the album cryptically yet evocatively: “Surfacing is about me ﬁnally growing up and facing ugly things about myself. We all have a dark side; it’s bullshit to say that we don’t. At some point we’re going to have to face that” (Sarah McLachlan ofﬁcial Web site). Musically, it is a more cohesive, polished, and realized album— it’s McLachlan clicking on all cylinders, her skills in full display throughout. The vocals are front and center, with a slight echoing effect carefully placed. Guitars have minimal, but effective, delay as well. She has hit her stride, matured as an artist, and her sound is more realized. Surfacing is well-paced and smart. The ﬁrst song is “Building a Mystery,” which one might interpret as either an exploration of the creation of one’s image or the mystiﬁcation of a relationship. The lyrics, written in second person, add further distance and mystery to the topic. Focused on the ways in which one constructs and controls an image and sense of self, “Building a Mystery” examines one end of the spectrum of image. Two songs later, the mystery threatens to come unraveled in “Sweet Surrender,” a mid-tempo radio hit that is propelled by a simmering tension. It is another song that alludes to grace under pressure and growth, yet in some ways is a return to the subject matter that has consistently presented itself in McLachlan’s music: a search for independence and happiness with oneself and one’s choices. Here she is blunt about the past, likening the life she left behind to a cold room. The acceptance and release, though, come in the chorus when her soprano soars, “and sweet surrender/Is all I have to give.” One of her most signature songs, “Adia” also appears on Surfacing. Addressed to what seems like an old friend, the song begins with feelings of having failed

281

282

Women Icons of Popular Music

this friend, and McLachlan tries to encourage her friend to see the good in herself, to “take away your pain/And show you all the beauty you possess.” It’s a classic, straightforward McLachlan piano ballad complete with a memorable chorus and poignant lyrics. —journalist John Mackie Throughout, the lyrics run through the details of the relationship’s difﬁculty, and they return to the mantra that “we are born innocent” and suggest that the world quickly corrupts us. We cannot remain innocent for long. Certainly, one could read this song in a religious context and argue that “Adia” is about original sin and the fall from Eden. The sequencing and the general momentum of the album certainly allow for an ethereal, drifting sensibility to dominate. Surfacing starts strong with “Building a Mystery” followed by an otherwordly and beautiful “I Love You.” McLachlan puts two piano ballads together—“Adia” is followed by the resigned, wise “Do What You Have to Do.” “Witness” and “Angel” are complementarily contemplative tunes, and McLachlan and Marchand wake things up slightly with the mid-tempo, percussively spare, yet moody “Black and White.” Regardless of how the album works as a whole, the individual songs did phenomenally well on their own through various Billboard singles charts. The bluesy searching quality of “Angel,” yet another piano ballad, peaked at number one on the Adult Contemporary, Adult Top 40, and Top 40 charts on Billboard. Along with “Angel,” the song “Adia” appeared on no fewer than six different Billboard singles charts, including number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and Top 40 Adult Recurrents. “Sweet Surrender” and “Building a Mystery” fared similarly well. In light of the extreme success with radio—a result of her hard work on the road and growing fan base thanks to Lilith Fair—it makes sense that Surfacing has sold the most copies of any of her albums to date. As a testament to her songwriting skills—and her noted perfectionism with her craft and studio time—many of her tunes throughout her career show remarkable staying power. The singles from Surfacing are no exception, appearing on the Billboard charts ﬁrst in 1997, on the album’s release, and continuing to pop up through 2001, when “Sweet Surrender” was given the full dance treatment and appeared on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart at number six. The album also won two Grammys. Although Surfacing had sold well, its sheer popularity also may have hinted at something troubling, at least according to one reviewer for the All Music Guide, Stephen Thomas Erlewine. He suggested that it did not offer anything new. “And that suggests that even though McLachlan is at the height of her popularity, she may be beginning to run out of ideas.” Similarly, in The Village Voice, Carrie Havranek wrote in a review of McLachlan’s performance at Lilith Fair in the summer of 1999 that many of her latest songs felt too

Sarah McLachlan’s voice is so ethereal, she could make the Black Sabbath catalogue sound like lullabies.

Sarah McLachlan

similar and indistinct and that she could use a change. McLachlan, for example, could beneﬁt from using an electric rather than acoustic guitar more often than not. McLachlan’s sweet, seraphic songwriting was starting to feel old and tired. Mirrorball, comprising fourteen tracks, is a live album that for longtime fans serves best as a keepsake of her work from the Lilith Fair tour. It also provides a good introduction for the casual listener. The album could be interpreted as yet another move by McLachlan to tide over her fans as she continued to tour with Lilith Fair. Most fans were happy to buy it, as sales attest: Mirrorball was certiﬁed platinum on July 15, 1999, and triple platinum a little less than a year later, in April. The album features fourteen songs, ranging from older material such as “Path of Thorns” to “Sweet Surrender” to fan favorites such as “Ice Cream” and “Angel” to radio hits “Adia,” “Possession,” and “I Will Remember You.” Still, the selections were not adventurous or unexpected, and she stuck with what was proven, leaving some critical listeners disappointed. The album’s production values are high, and it does not offer much evidence that it’s a live album other than the occasional holler or scream from the audience. One might argue that the live album’s predictability is the result of McLachlan’s obsession with perfectionism. McLachlan’s appeal had reached a critical mass by 1999, after less than a half dozen albums and touring in less than ten years. Mirrorball would have to do, for a while. Exhausted, this time thanks to extensive Lilith Fair touring, McLachlan slowed down a bit. In April 2002, she gave birth to a daughter, India. McLachlan could afford to take some time off and stay out of the limelight. A New Chapter or a Return to Form? After several years off, critics and fans were wondering what McLachlan’s new material would sound like, once it ﬁnally emerged. Critics who had called McLachlan’s work stale were also curious. They both got their answer with Afterglow, which was released in November 2003 and marked her ﬁrst album and return to touring after a long period of rest and time with her family. She had started working on the music in December 2001 with Marchand, but mostly in ﬁts and starts. It was also her ﬁrst album of new material in nearly seven years, but the time spent working on this album was fraught with personal tragedy. McLachlan’s mother passed away and her husband Ashwin’s father passed away in the months leading up to the birth of their daughter India. Yet another collaboration (writing and producing) with Pierre Marchand, the album is polished, clean, impeccable, and more subdued than previous releases. It eventually went quadruple platinum; the DVD compilation she released shortly after the album came out went double platinum despite a marked absence of several years from touring and recording.

283

284

Women Icons of Popular Music

The album presented her with crises and struggles. Working with the material so long skewed her perspective—she admitted at one point that she hated the songs she had written. The process became so difﬁcult that she couldn’t see past the end result. It took a long time before she perceived the struggle as a sign. When she realized she was putting too much pressure on herself to ﬁnish the album, she stopped working for a couple of months and didn’t play the piano or listen to the music. Finally, she was able to see the time off as a blessing. Although the year was difﬁcult, the experience of childbirth shifted her perspective, as it often does. Embracing the perspective of focusing more on the simple happiness of her daughter was a rejuvenating counterpoint to the twelve years she had spent recording and touring. By the time Afterglow was released, however, many critics were beginning to tire of her signature sound and yearned for some signs of growth and variety. Rolling Stone observed that she has a “gorgeous voice—malleable and exotic” and that she is a “skillful composer” but that her music is more often than not overtly concerned with “the pursuit of beauty, soporiﬁc and selfabsorbed.” Despite the fact that the album is more consistently subdued than perhaps some of her previous releases, there was a desire for McLachlan to create something different from the beautiful soundscapes she was known for. Some might call Afterglow predictable and reliable, but the record could have followed Surfacing by six months instead of years, so seamless is the transition between the albums. Despite the critical disagreement, the album received a Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album and its song “Fallen” was nominated for Best Female Pop Vocal. As the album’s leadoff track and ﬁrst single, “Fallen” is a safe McLachlan song in which she returns to the topic of human failure similar to the one she presents in “Adia.” “Fallen,” another piano ballad, is a ﬁrst-person narrative about making errors, messing things up, and perhaps discovering that you’ve gone too far in the wrong direction. Perhaps the growth will come with her next full-length studio album of new material. Even though she was working on Afterglow when all of these monumental life-changing things were happening, it would take a fair amount time before she would truly be able to incorporate those present topics into her songwriting. True to form, with McLachlan things take their own due course, and she does not rush the process of inspiration. She also does not rush her own emotional healing, as the intimate lyrics of Afterglow reveal. Like many artists of her caliber who came of age during the dawn of MTV, music videos have been an important means for her to convey her sense of self and music. Since the very beginning of her career with Solace, McLachlan has created visually engaging music videos that get people talking. For “Path of Thorns (Terms)” from that album, McLachlan appeared naked in the video. Because the song was about a woman’s feelings of vulnerability and sadness over a lover whom she could not keep, the nudity made sense. McLachlan was worried about what her parents would think, though, and if they would

Sarah McLachlan

understand that her nudity was meant to show vulnerability rather than sexiness. Her mother thought it was tasteful. Savvy from the start about video’s possibilities, it made sense that by 2004, she had released several collections of music videos and live performances, too. Sarah McLachlan Video Compilation 1989–1998 was released in 1998, and both Mirrorball (1999) and Afterglow (2004) were supported by live concert DVDs. Releasing collections of them was a natural. She has equal success with these formats, too—every single one of her live studio albums and videos have been certiﬁed gold, platinum, or multiplatinum by RIAA or diamond by the CRIA. Although McLachlan does take a long time to release albums of new material, she never leaves her fans without something to buy in the interim. This time, it came in the form of remixes. In December 2003, Sarah McLachlan Remixed was released, and it became a number one Billboard electronic album hit. It is not too surprising that deejays and other artists would be interested in taking her emotional, ambient music and giving it the electronic, ambient treatment. Pierre Marchand worked as the album’s producer, with mixes by noted artist William Orbit, for example. In September 2005, she released the Bloom Remix album. Deejays and electronica acts such as Talvin Singh, Thievery Corporation, and even will.i.am of the hip-hop group the Black Eyed Peas applied their various talents with beats and samples to a dozen of her songs. The most noteworthy track on Bloom is the danceable but tense six-minute remix of the song “World on Fire,” which appeared in a more sedate, midtempo rendering on Afterglow. On Bloom, the song becomes the closest thing to an anthem she has ever written; it retains her signature ethereal vocals, but the quickly pulsing synthetic beats behind them tap into the song’s latent urgency and gives it new life. Throughout, the narrator tries to ﬁnd hope in a world whose shred of remaining innocence has been stripped away. The video for the song, directed by Sophie Muller, was nominated for a Best Short Form Music Video in 2006 and featured footage of people in need in countries such as Afghanistan, India, Nairobi, South Africa, and Southeast Asia. “World on Fire” is undoubtedly the ﬁrst time McLachlan has made such an explicitly political statement, both in song and in music video form. Wintersong, released in October 2006, is her ﬁrst holiday album and is another example of McLachlan creating art out of personal pain and struggle. She lost her mother to cancer a week before Christmas in 2002, but has a daughter for whom Christmas is a time of excitement and joy. The album was recorded with longtime producing partner Pierre Marchand at her home studio in Vancouver. McLachlan says that Christmas is a really meaningful time of year, and she picked songs that to her reﬂect the nostalgia for the season, songs that she grew up listening to herself. The twelve tracks include a cover of John Lennon’s classic song “Happy Xmas (War is Over),” “Silent Night,” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” “What Child is This?,” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” In addition to penning the title song, McLachlan honors two fellow Canadians with a cover of Joni Mitchell’s song “River”

285

286

Women Icons of Popular Music

from her 1971 album Blue, and Gordon Lightfoot’s “Song for a Winter’s Night” from his 1967 release The Way I Feel. The album capper features a duet with fellow Canadian and jazz singer Diana Krall on the Vince Guaraldi composition “Christmas Time Is Here,” made popular in A Charlie Brown Christmas television special. The contemplative title track “Wintersong” looks at grief and loss through her own experience while remembering the happiness memories of a lost loved one can bring.

MISSION, MOTIVATION, PROCESS McLachlan’s career is singularly marked by her partnership with Pierre Marchand. In the early 1990s, before they met, Marchand was not very well known as a producer and was working as a keyboard player in his own Montreal-based band Luba. He had, however, the good fortune to be a student of Manitoba-born producer Daniel Lanois, well known for his extraordinarily inﬂuential work with U2, Peter Gabriel, and Brian Eno, among others. Marchand had not produced much, but his ﬁrst credit was working on Heartbeats Accelerating by fellow Canadians Kate and Anna McGarrigle. Initially, though, the partnership seemed like anything but a perfect match in the eyes of Nettwerk: Marchand and McLachlan are both perfectionists, which boded well for their budding partnership but not for the record company. The wheels of commerce, especially those that drive the music business, do not pause to favor the efforts of perfectionists. Putting together Solace did not offer much solace of its own because McLachlan was not as prepared as usual to enter the studio. The label expected it would only take her about six weeks and started asking for some tracks soon thereafter. The tracks she sent in were bare and in need of work. The label was not happy with her progress, and she said they did not know which song would be the hit. She, however, had always thought they considered her an “alternative” act, one for whom massive commercial success was not in the game plan. The label wanted her to write another hit that sounded like “Vox” from her debut album, to add hip-hop beats to her work, and to model her songs after their superstar act Whitney Houston, a move that seems preposterous in hindsight. Frustrated with what she perceived as an unsupportive label that was only concerned about the bottom line and not at all the creative process, she and Marchand sought a change of scenery. In addition to their frustration, the money from Arista was running out, and so they sought out cheaper quarters. McLachlan and Marchand took off for New Orleans, to a rented room near the home of Daniel Lanois, and worked on putting Solace together. Arista waited patiently. Meanwhile, Marchand made it his mission to encourage McLachlan to do something new with her voice. Because of him, she sings in a lower key than she previously had, which comes across as more intimate.

Sarah McLachlan

287

Marchand was not afraid to work her very hard, at a seemingly relentless pace, but it still took a year to My spirit decided to be set free complete the album. When they were ready to deliver and I started writing. —on writing the material for the album to the label McLachlan was conﬁdent (and Fumbling accurate) about how Arista would receive it. Since the success of Fumbling, McLachlan’s career has been marked by extremely exhausting periods of work and touring, followed by equally extreme periods of rest and seclusion. After touring, she said she must be by herself for long periods of time. “That is the songwriting process. It’s also rediscovering myself and who I’ve become after this year of touring” (Sullivan 1995). During the time she worked on recording Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, McLachlan spent six months at Marchand’s studio in Morin Heights in the Laurentian Mountains north of Montreal. She rented a house that was rather secluded and spent time alone, away from the road and the trappings of touring. In such an unstructured environment, the album slowly emerged in organic, unhurried way as a product of the focused creativity McLachlan and Marchand were able to cultivate. For example, Marchand placed a restriction on her during the recording phase: No acoustic guitars. “He’d give me an electric guitar, turn the amp up to 11 and say, ‘Control this.’ And I’d never played an electric before, much less when it was feeding back in my face.” She admitted that she played wrong notes “all over the place,” but that the experience was rewarding, even exciting. “He’d take moments and piece them together and make this whole track, or a couple of tracks, of guitar” (Sculley 1994). Although some reporters characterized the title of Fumbling Towards Ecstasy as provocative, McLachlan dismissed the notion that she intended any sexual connotations. She told Australia’s Sunday Mail that it had literary origins. “Actually, it’s sort of a bastardization of some words taken from a poem by Wilfred Owens, the English war poet. It included the phrase, ‘there was an ecstasy of fumbling’ ” (Yorke 1995). She said she liked it so much she wrote it down in the notebook she keeps to jot down thoughts for songs. Because the phrase itself was difﬁcult, “hard-sounding,” she said, she was unable to make it work. One day she inverted it, and that made all the difference. “I leapt up, realizing it was perfect . . . for life . . . for making all those mistakes, those very things that you learn from” (Yorke 1995). The song “Possession,” about a crazed lover, was written in response to an experience she had being stalked by an obsessed fan whom she said “sort of camped out on my doorstep about a block from my house . . . I was jumpy and frightened and my ﬁerce imagination, it would run with me. . . . . All of a sudden, your life is just completely open in every way and there’s no going back. All of a sudden, you cannot go to the grocery store” (Sullivan 1995). For the song, she put herself in the position of the obsessed fan and tried to imagine the situation from his perspective. Its basis in a real-life experience

288

Women Icons of Popular Music

certainly fed the growing image that her songs were “confessional” along the lines of Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush, and Sinéad O’Connor. However, McLachlan takes creative license with the autobiographical elements of her work and lets different perspectives percolate before solidifying them into a song. Throughout her career, McLachlan has relied heavily on her relationship with Pierre Marchand; her longstanding collaboration with him are somewhat responsible for her consistent sound. Staying with one producer is almost an anomaly in the music business, however, and the choice could also be considered something that works against experimentation, keeping her within a comfort level. When she was working on Wintersong, she was having some difﬁculty ﬁnishing the title track, an original in the midst of an album of covers. “I was really struggling to ﬁnish the lyrics. We went off to our separate corners and wrote out all sorts of stuff. Then we came together to hash out the details of the story, without bashing people over the head with obvious suffering—as I am prone to do! Pierre is great at getting the point of the song across subtly” (Sarah McLachlan ofﬁcial Web site).

LEGACY AND OTHER INTERESTS In addition to her own highly successful and critically acclaimed musical career, McLachlan’s legacy is inextricably linked with Lilith Fair, but her own stellar recording and performing career marks her as an artist with singular vision, one whose success has made the careers possible of and inspired a whole generation of female singers and songwriters. Additionally, McLachlan’s evocative music has appeared in ﬁlms such as The Brothers McMullen, Due South, and Kissed, along with television shows such as Roswell and Charmed. McLachlan has taken a quietly philanthropic approach, donating her time, music, and energy to humanistic causes around the world. She has performed at beneﬁt concerts for organizations such as LIFEbeat, which works with HIV-positive and AIDS patients. In fact, her interest in working toward bettering the welfare of others dates back to the beginning of her career. Before the release of Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, McLachlan took some time off from her fourteen months on the road. In September 1992, she went on a tour of Cambodia and Thailand to work on a documentary called World Vision with a charity of the same name. Its emphasis is on poverty and child prostitution. The experience was an eyeopener and changed her perspective. She was impressed by the people of Southeast Asia, too, for their dignity in the face of such conditions. The impact of her trip gave her a broader worldview to incorporate into her writing. The song “Ice,” for instance, reﬂects that bittersweet life-altering experience. It is a sobering ballad that subtly highlights the numbing horror of sexual slavery. Indeed, one of McLachlan’s greatest assets is her ability to write evocatively

Sarah McLachlan

and beautifully, striking a balance between the overt and the oblique. Even when she is exploring difﬁcult subject matter, she is rarely ever accused of being didactic or preachy. In September 2003, she established the Sarah McLachlan Music Outreach program, designed to provide free music education to inner city schools whose music programs have been eliminated or cut back. The outreach program works in conjunction with Arts Umbrella, Canada’s visual and performing artist institute for children ages two to nineteen, and is the pilot program of the Sarah McLachlan Foundation, which is geared toward advancing music education for young people in Canada, especially those in underserved communities. The foundation underwrites educational programs in conjunction with preexisting cultural and/or educational programs. McLachlan released a video for the song “World on Fire” directed by Sophie Miller in September 2004 whose budget of $150,000 was largely donated toward and distributed among eleven charitable organizations, including CARE, Engineers Without Borders, Comic Relief, Help the Aged, Warchild, and Heifer International. The video cost only $15 to make—the price of a Sony mini digital video tape—and the artist and her crew generously donated their time to the project for no monetary exchange. The New York Times called the video “a modestly brilliant gesture: it stacks up budget items for a typical clip against what the same $150,000 budget would buy as relief efforts—cattle, bicycles, housing, education, medicine. . . . The contrast between show-business splurges and practical aid is startling” (Pareles 2004). It went on to receive a Grammy nomination for Best Short Form Music Video. In June 2005, she participated in Live 8 along with artists such as diverse as Keith Urban, Dave Matthews Band, and Stevie Wonder on the Philadelphia stage. The multicity event, commemorating the 1984 fundraising and awareness raising concert Live Aid, was designed as an activist event under one message to eradicate poverty. Live 8 took its name from the G8 summit of world leaders that was taking place around the same time of the concert. It is too soon to tell deﬁnitively, but perhaps McLachlan’s recent involvement in political and humanitarian causes is an indication of where her music will take her next. The new approach would enable her to explore a world outside her own interiority, and the resulting music would provide fans with a new facet of her personality to explore.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. Arista, 1994 Surfacing. Arista, 1997 Mirrorball. Arista, 1999 Afterglow. Arista, 2003

289

290

Women Icons of Popular Music

FURTHER READING Bliss, Karen. “McLachlan Basks in ‘Afterglow.’ ” Rolling Stone online (November 4, 2003). Available at www.rollingstone.com/artists/mclachlan/articles/story/5935464/ mclachlan_basks_in_afterglow. Boehlert, Eric. “The Modern Age.” Billboard (October 29, 1994). Considine, J.D. “ ‘Fumbling’ Along the Road: Sara [sic] McLachlan Never Stops Moving.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (July 21, 1995). Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. “Afterglow.” All Music Guide. Available online at http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=&sql=10:gvfoxqraldte. Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. “Surfacing.” All Music Guide. Available online at www .allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:jbfqxquhldke. Gardner, Elysa. “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. Review.” Rolling Stone 684 (June 16, 1994). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/237209/review/ 5942759/fumblingtowardsecstasy. Havranek, Carrie. “The Sound of the City: Girls Interrupted.” The Village Voice (August 10, 1999). Available online at www.villagevoice.com/9932,sotc,7555,22. html. Holden, Stephen. “Review/Pop: Reﬂective Young Singer With a Maturing Style.” New York Times (March 28, 1994). Howell, Peter. “Rising-Star McLachlan Does it Her Way.” Toronto Star (July 12, 1991). Howell, Peter. “Sarah McLachlan.” Toronto Star (June 22, 1996). Kaufman, Gil. “McLachlan Sets Glowing Return.” Rolling Stone online (September 4, 2003). Available at www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5935497/mclachlan_ sets_glowing_return. Lacey, Liam. “I Don’t Need To Sell a Million Records to Feel Satisﬁed.” Globe and Mail, Toronto, Canada (June 15, 1991). Lechner, Ernesto. “Afterglow. Review.” Rolling Stone 936 (November 27, 2003). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/3000657/afterglow. Mackie, John. “New, Tougher Sound for Sarah McLachlan.” Montreal Gazette (November 20, 1993). McCartney, Kelly. “Review. Solace.” All Music Guide. Available online at www .allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=&sql=10:k9fwxqq5ldde. McLachlan, Sarah. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. See www.sarahmclachlan.com. Miers, Jeff. “Listening Post: Brief Reviews of Select Releases.” Buffalo News (September 11, 2005). Moore, Micki. “Ehm-Bracing Success: Erica Ehm’s Top 10 Remarkable Young Women Share their Life, Dreams and Opinions in New Book.” The Toronto Sun (November 27, 1994). N.J. “Heart on her Sleeve.” Maclean’s (March 28, 1994). Pareles, Jon. “Putting Her Money Where Her Music Video Is.” New York Times (September 26, 2004). Sarah McLachlan Music Outreach. See www.smmo.com. Sculley, Alan. “A Striking Case of Blind Faith: Canadian Record Label Gambled on Sarah McLachlan . . . and Won.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch (April 29, 1994). Strauss, Neil. “The Pop Life: A Song Survives. New York Times, December 5, 1996.

Sarah McLachlan

Sullivan, Jim. “From Solitude to Song: Sarah McLachlan Needs Her Time Alone.” Boston Globe (March 17, 1995). Szklarski, Cassandra. “Home a No-Sing Zone for McLachlan.” Toronto Star (October 17, 2006). Violanti, Anthony. “Singer, Songwriter, Star: Sarah McLachlan’s Breakthrough Album, All for Love.” Buffalo News (March 18, 1994). White, Timothy. “Sarah McLachlan: Irony & Ecstasy.” Billboard (January 8, 1994). Yorke, Ritchie. “Sarah Has Distinct Edge.” Queensland Sunday Mail (October 29, 1995).

291

© Central Press/Getty Images

Joni Mitchell

294

Women Icons of Popular Music

OVERVIEW

The music isn’t vague. It strikes against the very nerves of (people’s) lives, and in order to do that, you have to strike against the very nerves of your own.

Joni Mitchell is revered because of the impact she has had on scores of musicians, but especially female singers and songwriters. Many of these women involved in the folk tradition have cited Mitchell as key to their development and thinking about music. She may be the single most inﬂuential female songwriter of the twentieth century, one whose iconoclasm, strong ideas, and unusual approach set her apart from all of her peers. Her love of jazz and blues, her poetic, evocative lyrics, her inventive guitar playing, and her cool voice have inspired everyone from Suzanne Vega to Chrissie Hynde to Patti Smith to dozens of young unsigned songwriters across America struggling to become the next important female artist. Throughout her career, Joni Mitchell has not been afraid to innovate, starting off with roots in folk and blues but stretching toward pop, jazz, world, and other avant-garde efforts before most other artists even ventured in such directions, and predating many of the moves the general music business would take. Such independence makes Mitchell look like a smart visionary who has been, for the most part, able to stay ahead of trends by subtly suggesting if not setting them outright. The breadth of her accomplishments cannot be easily reﬂected by any statistic; throughout her career she has kept her fan base and expanded it as scores of singers and songwriters, male and female, have identiﬁed her as a deﬁning inﬂuence on their careers. Joni Mitchell has nearly always remained interesting, and this is her value to the world of music. The artist with a groundbreaking, unorthodox approach is not usually going to be the same person who sells millions of albums, but her career has certainly indicated otherwise. She has served as a model for artistic integrity because she has not been afraid to answer to her creative impulses. Mitchell is never one who wants to repeat herself, but the irony is that if one were to listen to her albums in a continuum, they are consistent without being repetitive, so some essence of her underlying style as a songwriter prevails. The singularity of her sound can partially be attributed to her nonstandard, or open, tunings; in her early days, emerging artists such as Eric Clapton and David Crosby were amazed by her style. When one looks at only the facts and ﬁgures, the career of Joni Mitchell does not seem terribly impressive. Certainly, contemporaries such as Carole King, Janis Joplin, and Aretha Franklin enjoyed larger record sales, but none of them really stayed open to the possibility of change throughout their careers the way Mitchell did. Although she has had much critical success, she is not a colossal commercial success. In the forty years of her career, she has won ﬁve Grammy Awards. In 1969 she won for Clouds, which nabbed a Best Folk Performance or Folk Recording, and in 1974 she won one for the song “Down to You,” which got her a Grammy for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist/Best Background Arrangement. Another Grammy, in

Joni Mitchell

295

1995, was for Best Album Package for Turbulent Indigo—the album itself won one for Best Pop Vocal [You are] a product of your Album. This win suggested a market change in how own overeducation . . . why music is classiﬁed and, to some extent, how her music do you let other people have is understood in a decade that saw a real revival of the your hits for you? You want a singer/songwriter folk tradition. Finally, in 2000 she hit, don’t you? Put some won a Grammy for the album Both Sides Now, in the fiddles in it. category of Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance. —John Lennon, talking to The inconsistent, unpredictable nature of the certiMitchell about Court and Spark ﬁcation of her albums also indicates that throughout her career people were constantly returning to her music or discovering it for the ﬁrst time—a testament to her longevity. Ironically, only nine of her twenty albums have sold at least 500,000 copies, and only three, 1970’s Ladies of the Canyon, 1971’s Blue, and 1974’s Court and Spark, have hit platinum and/or multiplatinum status. What’s even more unusual, given her tremendous signiﬁcance as an artist, is that it took until 1986 for Blue and Ladies of the Canyon to hit platinum sales and until 1997 for Court and Spark to hit platinum and double platinum. Oddly, Clouds, her second album, achieved gold status more than twenty-ﬁve years after its release, in 2001. Plenty of her records, though, have landed in various places on the Billboard charts, even from her self-titled debut, which slipped into the 189 slot on the pop albums chart. The highest-peaking albums were Court and Spark (1974) and Miles of Aisles (1975), both of which hit number two on the pop albums chart. Mingus, released in 1979, hit number three on the jazz album chart and number seventeen on the pop album chart—something that was unusual for the time. Mitchell’s music has left its mark and inspired a diverse array of artists such as Jane Siberry, Tracy Chapman, Suzanne Vega, Norah Jones, Patti Smith, Bonnie Raitt, Sarah McLachlan, the Indigo Girls, Nanci Grifﬁth, and Dar Williams. Mitchell’s music has been shaped by Joan Baez, who was not much older than her but who started her career much earlier, and Bob Dylan, another contemporary but one whose career accomplishments early on helped Mitchell ﬁnd her way as an artist. Miles Davis and jazz and blues are also deﬁning contributions to her vision, too, along with painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso. In terms of songwriting, Mitchell is identiﬁed with singles such as “Big Yellow Taxi,” “Case of You,” “Chelsea Morning,” “Both Sides Now,” “Amelia,” “California,” “Carey,” and “Help Me” among dozens of other classics, many of which have been covered by a plethora of musicians.

EARLY YEARS Joni Anderson was born at Ft. McLeod in Alberta, Canada, to Myrtle Marguerite McKee, who worked as a bank clerk and schoolteacher, and William Anderson, a lieutenant in Canada’s Royal Air Force. Her ﬁrst memories involve

296

Women Icons of Popular Music

color and light—perhaps foreshadowing her interest in art and painting—but her surroundings were anything but beautiful. The base was remote and drab; gardens were nonexistent. After World War II ended and her father left the military, the family moved to an even more remote part of the Canadian prairie, in Maidstone, Saskatchewan, some 300 miles from the U.S. border, where the school had no books and one large room. By the time she was six her family had moved to Saskatoon, the largest city in the province. Mitchell grew up as a solitary but artistic child. Her childhood was marked by ill health, including a ruptured appendix and bouts with rubella (German measles) and measles. Mitchell always liked to paint, an activity that often isolated her. She also grew up with music—her father taught trumpet, and at age seven she asked for piano lessons and took them for a couple of years. Mitchell made up her own songs instead of learning what her piano teacher assigned her, much to her teacher’s chagrin. At the age of nine she contracted polio, and while she was recovering in a children’s hospital, she started to sing to other patients, marking the start of her performing career, however informal. She was determined to get better and made a point to sing as loud as she could. Neil Young got polio during the same Canadian epidemic, she said. Singing and music helped her cope, but so did smoking cigarettes. Deﬁantly, she also developed a love of dancing. Later, in college, she taught herself to play guitar by using a Pete Seeger instruction manual, but she started on a baritone ukulele in high school. When she was in high school, some older acquaintances she met at a party and who worked for television station in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, put her on television for an hour, so impressed were they with her playing. Her material was pretty traditional—English ballads, which were sometimes maudlin and in stark contrast to her high school persona of the outgoing, dancing music lover. Mitchell’s childhood behavior showed early signs of her resistance to and questioning of authority, especially in the form of organized religion. Some authority ﬁgures got through to her, such as her seventh grade teacher who told her, “If you can paint with a brush, you can paint with words”—advice that has stuck with her for life. After losing interest in her studies in high school—art and fashion and music were of much more interest to her—she ﬂunked out, but spent time getting her diploma just in case. She went to the Alberta College of Art in Calgary, and her transformation into introspective folk singer took place as she started to become part of the folk music scene. Like many songwriters, she started art school but soon discovered that she really preferred music to the regimented approach to art. She left Calgary for the coffeehouse scene in Toronto, where she could play gigs. At age twenty Mitchell became pregnant and, because she was unwed, tried to hide the pregnancy from her parents. Once her daughter Kelly Dale Anderson was born, she put her into a foster home temporarily because she could not support her. Soon after this, she met folk singer Chuck Mitchell, who was able to get her gigs in the United States. But, she said, they got married for all the wrong

Joni Mitchell

reasons. At that point, she started to perform under the name and become well known as Joni Mitchell. This sets her apart—there are few female artists who perform under their married name. Mitchell hoped that the marriage would provide her and her daughter with some stability, but that was not the case. They moved to Detroit, Michigan, and started playing as a duo at her husband’s suggestion. She was completely beholden to him for her well-being in nearly every way, but she could sense the relationship’s frailty and falseness. To escape into her own world and sort out her feelings, she started writing. Chuck was not interested in raising her daughter, so she made the difﬁcult decision to put Kelly up for adoption. Mitchell kept writing and felt that part of herself was missing. She started playing in clubs and developed a following, surprising people with her dark, smoky voice and songwriting skills. In winter 1965 she met Neil Young. She also met Tom Rush and Eric Anderson, who would sometimes stay at the Mitchells’ apartment in Detroit. Rush started playing some of her songs, and Anderson taught her some open tunings. It was Dylan’s success with poetic songs, too, that impacted her and gave her a sense of her own possibilities. Around the time that her marriage was falling apart some of her songs were getting attention via renditions by other singers. The most notable example is Judy Collins singing “Both Sides Now,” a classic Joni Mitchell tune in 1968, which became a Top 10 hit. Fairport Convention covered “Eastern Rain” and recorded “Chelsea Morning” and “I Don’t Know Where I Stand” on their debut album. Tom Rush became associated with her classic “The Circle Game.” There was sufﬁcient interest in her music among musicians of a certain genre before she even became a household word; their enthusiasm for her material certainly did not hurt her career. Her early buzz garnered her some gigs in New York City. Mitchell signed to Reprise in 1967. David Crosby, a former member of the folk rock group the Byrds and who a year later would form the supergroup Crosby, Stills, and Nash with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, offered to produce her debut album. Songs to a Seagull was the simple, unfussy production that was released in 1968. Some critics described it as a concept album, because the ﬁrst side is called “I Came to the City” with urban subject matter, and the ﬂipside “Out of the City and Down to the Seaside” deals with nature. The concept aspect was not pretentious; rather it gave listeners an understanding that this artist approaches her work with a sense of thoughtfulness, purpose, and sophistication, both in terms of its subject matter and her compositions. An article in the New York Times in December 1968 said that Mitchell wrote about where she had been, whether that’s Canadian prairies, big cities, or the seaside, and that her “lyrics are poetic portraits, artistically detailed and honest. Her melodies are exotic, taking unusual turns in time and tone” (Shelton 1968). In hindsight, some of these comments are revealing; they show how unusual Mitchell’s approach was at the time. In particular, the

297

298

Women Icons of Popular Music

article also remarked on the production of the album, saying that it needed more embellishment—that her guitar and voice were not always enough, that the songs felt somewhat underserved by their arrangement and production, and that the album overall did not reﬂect her ﬁne ability as a composer and performer. Some of her debut album’s content reﬂects her marriage’s dissolution, which early on gave her the tag of being a confessional singer/songwriter. Since such a term implies a sense of guilt and perhaps compulsion on the part of the artist, it does not seem like an apt description. Still, it is not hard to see how “I Had a King” can be construed as a reﬂection on her failed marriage, especially in the chorus. The album also marks the beginning of an association—partly romantic, partly professional—with the members of Crosby, Stills, and Nash that would characterize a good portion of her career. It was only a couple years before the beginning of her rise to fame that Bob Dylan plugged in. The musical landscape was changing to electric folk rock, but the image of the folksinger troubadour remained ﬁrmly entrenched in the musical landscape. In mid-1968, though, in a review of her performance in New York City, Robert Shelton wrote in the New York Times that “singer songwriters are making a comeback” and that Mitchell was a key proponent of the practice. The resurgence, he argued, is a result of economic factors (singer/songwriters are cheaper to book than large bands) and of changing tastes—people were starting to tire of electric guitar–based pop bands. Shelton described Mitchell as having “a ﬁne voice” and said that “she writes like a poet and strums like the devil. Using a lot of unusual and experimental guitar tunings, she heightens her moody songs with doleful accompaniments” (Shelton 1968). However he also mentioned her similarity to Judy Collins and Buffy Sainte-Marie in her vocal style, to Tom Rush and Eric Anderson with her approach to guitar, and to Leonard Cohen for her lyrics. Indeed, after he dismissed a song that reminded him too much of Bob Dylan (saying “That Song About the Midway” sounded like “Baby Blue”), Robert Shelton said that she had enough “ﬁnely wrought songs that are undoubtedly going to be called Joni Mitchell songs” (Shelton 1968). He even included “Circle Game” and “Both Sides Now” as her some of her best work to date, “foreshadowing a strong future as a writer.”

CAREER PATH From Confessional Songwriting to Experiments in Jazz Thanks to some good early buzz about her music, Mitchell’s second album, Clouds, was released in May 1969 and was well received. It peaked at thirty-one on the Billboard pop albums chart. It featured “Chelsea Morning,” a sunny, short, acoustic guitar–driven ode to her new neighborhood in Chelsea,

Joni Mitchell

New York City. The song features many memorable lyrics, including “the sun poured in like butterscotch and stuck to all my senses.” The album capper was “Both Sides Now,” which had already been covered and had a life of its own before being introduced to the world as her song. Like good poetry, the lyrics make the familiar strange, referencing clouds, love, life, circus crowds, and friends, with the recurring theme that perhaps it is impossible to really know them. She sings “I’ve looked at life from both sides now/ I really don’t know life at all.” During much of the mid- to late 1970s Mitchell was at the nexus of several important relationships: She knew Neil Young, a fellow Canadian, prior to his joining the folk-rock group Crosby, Stills, and Nash (or CSN, as they are known—later CSNY after Young joined). Mitchell had professional/romantic relationships (the line between them was often blurry) with many of her contemporaries, including David Crosby, Graham Nash, James Taylor, and, brieﬂy, the actor Warren Beatty. During these years, Mitchell, along with CSNY, the Eagles, Carly Simon, Jackson Browne, and Linda Ronstadt were all at some point managed by David Geffen and/or Elliot Roberts or signed to deals that Geffen had arranged. Clouds beneﬁted from much of the excitement of her debut and the fact that other songwriters were performing her work, and in 1969 she received a Grammy for Best Folk Performance. Released in 1970, Ladies of the Canyon was written after Mitchell had moved to California. The title might refer to either Topanga Canyon or Laurel Canyon, where Mitchell lived. The record fared reasonably well, peaking at twenty-seven on the Billboard pop albums chart and providing the single “Big Yellow Taxi,” which reached sixty-seven on the pop singles chart. Ladies also features another classic Mitchell tune, “Circle Game.” A plainspoken, poetic comment on the cyclical nature of life, it has the well-known chorus, “[W]e can’t return we can only look behind from where we came/And go round and round and round in the circle game.” The album also includes her song “Woodstock” that was recorded with just an electric piano, which along with her voice and the song’s haunting lyrics sounds like a cautionary ode to the times. Still, the song’s anthemic quality made it an alluring number for artists to cover, and it was made famous by CSNY, who were extremely popular during this time. Mitchell and David Crosby were an item off and on for much of this period, followed by a ﬂing with Graham Nash. Ladies of the Canyon is, overall, an album that moves in a pop direction and away from the sounds of traditional folk music that permeated her ﬁrst two releases. Rolling Stone called the album’s songs, “enigmatic, poetic word-journeys that move from taxis to windows to whisky bars to boots of leather and racing cars” (Von Tersch 1970). The 1971 album Blue solidiﬁed Mitchell’s reputation as a confessional singer/songwriter. The album’s ten vignettes are centered around her voice, an acoustic guitar, a dulcimer, and a piano to create an austere exercise in introspection. Here, her cool, crystalline soprano suddenly soars mid-phrase and catches the listener off guard. Mitchell wrote the material during time spent

299

300

Women Icons of Popular Music

primarily in Europe with the result that is described by one critic as a “luminous, starkly confessional” release. If there was any question about her talent, her insightful take on human nature, and her ability to establish a consistent mood through her music, Blue clariﬁed matters and gained her a lot of attention in the process. It peaked at number ﬁfteen on the Billboard pop albums chart, and one of the release’s luminous spots, “Carey,” hit ninety-three, suggesting that in the early 1970s, hit singles and hit records could be mutually exclusive things. Throughout the record, the lyrics reveal an increasingly complex territory. The lead-off song, “All I Want,” features an almost sauntering syncopation that shows her songwriting—and perhaps her life—starting to open up to possibilities. In the ﬁrst line, she declares “I am on a lonely road and I am traveling/Looking for something to set me free,” a lyric whose irony is only matched by its exactness. “Carey,” too, shows a sense of ﬂuidity by the end, with verses that lope along lazily along a subtle percussion and land at a chorus that sneaks up on the listener. The song evokes a scene of a traveler who has encountered someone fascinating along the way; it is actually about a man Mitchell met from Greece. The verses suggest the narrator is living in the moment and trying not to look too far into the future. In “California,” another addition to her growing ode to destinations, Mitchell shows signs of Bob Dylan’s inﬂuence, cramming many words into a musical phrase and touching on the chorus only momentarily. For her the chorus is just a stop along the way on a musical ride that can veer off in intriguing directions. The chorus dips into a tango before resuming its course, compared to “Carey,” which dances a lazy calypso. Elsewhere, the album gives us memorable metaphors in “Case of You,” in which Mitchell compares her relationship to Holy Communion and ﬁnishing the chorus off with the declaration, “I could drink a case of you/And still be on my feet.” Critically, too, Blue marked an achievement for Mitchell. It became one of her landmark releases; the songs are focused and work together as part of a set that concerns itself with falling in love, making decisions, loneliness, heartache, and travel, told from the perspective of a woman who is trying to maintain a sense of independence. Rolling Stone’s Timothy Crouse said in his 1971 review that “Blue is not only a mood and a kind of music, it is also Joni’s name for her paramour.” Crouse also said that although half the songs are about her love interest, some seem to have been earlier works that had been shelved, such as “Little Green,” about her daughter. In the famous “River” Mitchell reﬂects on herself with a degree of self-pity, claiming she’s “so hard to handle,” and “so selﬁsh and so sad.” The title track is lodged halfway through the release, and Crouse called it “a distillation of pain and is therefore the most private of Joni’s private songs” (Crouse 1971). He even likened it to a Billie Holiday song for the sad insularity it suggests about the singer, her experiences, and her lover. Blue chronicles the breakup of Mitchell’s relationship with Graham Nash and possibly the “hopeless love” that she felt

Joni Mitchell

for James Taylor. The title track is an examination about his use of alcohol and drugs to alleviate his own sadness. In terms of the larger context of Blue, she resisted the idea of being an idol or icon, even though fans and music critics alike were clearly starting to perceive her as such. Mitchell said the album was an attempt to say to listeners, “worship me, but I’m a lonely person.” She maintained that her approach, regardless of whether one agrees with the term “confessional,” would make her less prone to idol worship; it would, ideally, make her more human. At the time, intimacy in songwriting was unusual, and Mitchell said that pop stars were supposed to paint themselves as bigger than life. Ironically, though, she had become larger than life herself: Blue brought her into territory where she was playing in arenas and larger theaters. After Blue, Mitchell bought a quiet retreat north of Vancouver, British Columbia, and wrote songs about her breakup with James Taylor, whom she dated starting sometime in mid-1970 after she and Nash split. Her career had put her into an intense public spotlight, as had her relationships, which were roughly chronicled in her ﬁrst ﬁve releases from 1967 to 1972. Mitchell followed Blue with 1972’s For the Roses, which showed that she was not going to stick with one particular “confessional” style. Mitchell was preoccupied about turning toward a pop style in For the Roses, since it is the ﬁrst album she did for David Geffen’s very ﬁrst label, Asylum Records. The label also put out Jackson Browne’s debut around the same time. Mitchell and Browne would tour together later, after her release, and have a brief love affair. The album produced the song “You Turn Me On (I’m a Radio),” which became her ﬁrst radio hit. Although she wrote the song as a smart-aleck response to what her label wanted—a hit—she reﬂected back on the process as having an amount of pressure on her. So she created the song “You Turn Me On (I’m a Radio).” And it worked. She followed up Roses with the 1974 Court and Spark, which to date has been her most commercially successful album. Mitchell wanted a fuller sound for this album—radio stations were not inclined to play her songs because she had not used bass or drums—but she had trouble ﬁnding musicians who truly understood her music. Because she was frustrated with that search, someone suggested she seek out some jazz musicians. She found Tom Scott, with whom she’d done some work on For the Roses, and the L.A. Express. Most pop musicians were accustomed to playing something much more straightforward, and thus had been imposing their sense of order on her music, which, as she described it, was packed with eccentricities. “People used to call my harmony weird. In the context of today’s [1990’s] music, it’s really not weird, but it is much broader polyphonic harmony” (Bego 2005, 122–123). Because Mitchell was not extensively trained in theory, she experienced frustration trying to communicate to her musicians what she heard in her head, so she often resorted to metaphor and hired transcribers who could notate her parts.

301

302

Women Icons of Popular Music

In a 2003 article in the San Diego Union-Tribune, writer Karla Peterson said Mitchell “ditched the stark acoustics of Blue wrapping her serrated relationship commentaries in yards of gleaming pop-rock.” She commented that Court and Spark inspired Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, and aging hippies, for whom her songs of fragmented lives resonated. Jon Landau, writing in Rolling Stone, pronounced it an “album about an individual struggling with notions of freedom, it is itself freer, looser, more obvious, occasionally more raunchy and not afraid to vary from past work. It is also sung from extraordinary beauty, from ﬁrst note to last.” Court and Spark even placed ﬁrst on the Village Voice Pazz & Jop annual critics poll, beating out albums by Steely Dan, Stevie Wonder, The Band, the Rolling Stones, and Linda Ronstadt. The album’s eleven songs impart Mitchell’s subtle jazz sensibility that she was starting to develop. The loose groove of the album in some ways reﬂects the time period, but it also reﬂects Mitchell’s growing conﬁdence, now that she was ﬁnally able to ﬁnd musicians with whom she could collaborate well. The album was so successful it produced three hit songs. “Help Me” is a simple twist on a classic love song that to date is her highest-charting single, reaching the Top 10 at number seven, “Free Man in Paris” made it to number twenty-two, and the raucous “Raised on Robbery” was the ﬁrst single whose story is set amid a bar brawl, which only made it to sixty-ﬁve. “Help Me” tells the story of her falling in love with John Guerin, who was her drummer at the time—ﬁttingly, the rhythm drives the song. Here, she frets about the balance between being in love and loving her freedom, which at this point was beginning to become a recurring theme. “Free Man in Paris,” the album’s other standout track, was written for David Geffen, in which she imagines him on a business trip in Paris but without any careers to wrangle or decisions to make about musicians. One of the strengths of her songwriting is that she knows when to be subtle; Mitchell has the ability to evoke a particular feeling, situation, or issue without being cryptic but without always explicitly stating it. For example, “Down to You” is a ballad with Mitchell’s piano playing at the helm and with an understated use of an orchestral arrangements. Written in second person, she says that “it all comes down to you” to make choices; she seems to be simultaneously admonishing herself and yearning for self-acceptance. She follows that track with “Just Like This Train,” a metaphorical examination of relationships in which her lovers are the boxcars and she is the conductor. Finally, though, Mitchell ends the album with a take on the Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross vocalese song “Twisted,” in which the narrator wonders whether or not she is truly crazy. It is a lighthearted take on a serious subject; it is also the ﬁrst time Mitchell recorded a song so ﬁrmly associated with jazz and by another songwriter. Mitchell’s next production was the live collection of songs Miles of Aisles, which came out just seven months after Court and Spark and featured her

I thought I was going to be a painter when I grew up, but I knew I could make up music. I heard it in my head. I always could do it, but it was discouraged.

Joni Mitchell

touring work with L.A. Express. It was a big success, hitting number two on the Billboard chart in the United States and thirty-four in the United Kingdom. One year later, in 1975, the poetically tilted The Hissing of Summer Lawns took her in a new direction yet again, one that found her embracing a more avant-garde approach with jazz-like arrangements. The song “The Jungle Line,” for example, sounds like what one might expect—African drums resonate throughout. The album exempliﬁes how Mitchell’s interest in “world” music predates much of the fascination that developed for world music in the mid- to late 1980s, thanks to Paul Simon’s album Graceland, Sting’s Dream of the Blue Turtles, and Mickey Hart’s Planet Drum. Mitchell maintained a fairly proliﬁc pace through much of the 1970s. Hissing and subsequent releases illustrate that as the 1970s progressed, Mitchell’s songwriting became less overtly about therapy with easily hummable melodies and more about personal expression through sonic exploration. Mitchell spent the latter half of the 1970s indulging in her love of jazz and building on the good will her earlier commercial releases gave her. For the most part, her later work has a spontaneous, loose feel that some of her earlier work predicts. It did not take long for her to be the kind of artist to develop a following among her peers—Prince is reputedly a fan of The Hissing of Summer Lawns. Her next and perhaps third watershed album, Hejira, came out in 1976. The title is an amalgam of two words: the Latin word hegira and the Arabic hijira, which loosely translated means “migration” and refers to Mohammed’s ﬂight from danger. Mitchell wrote most of the material while traveling cross-country alone. The album was recorded with the talented fretless bassist Jaco Pastorius, who played with the jazz supergroup Weather Report, of which Wayne Shorter was also a part. The songs are spare, cool, and have room to breathe, with just guitar, simple percussion, and sinewy bass along with her voice. All Music Guide said that the contribution of Pastorius “smoothed out the music’s more difﬁcult edges while employing minimalist techniques.” Most of the album consists of slower or otherwise ambling songs that on the whole demonstrate less of a traditional pop song structure and more of a synthesis of jazz, folk, and pop. For example, only two songs clock in at under ﬁve minutes; the rest are more expansive, ranging from six to eight minutes, as a jazz composition would be, and reﬂect her rootlessness. Rock critic Robert Christgau, writing in the Village Voice, gave the record a B-plus rating but said that “unfortunately, the chief satisfaction of Mitchell’s words—the way they map a woman’s reality—seems to diminish as her autonomy increases.” In short, Mitchell was becoming a less gender-speciﬁc songwriter, regardless of how much her gender enabled her to see or write things a certain way. However, the album was not completely esoteric or inaccessible. Hejira did contain such notable tunes as the restless “Coyote,” which was a single for the record, in which Mitchell likens a lover to the wild animal, and the similarly fast-paced “Black Crowes.” Other notable tracks include “Amelia,” about the aviator Amelia Earhart. At the time, the album went to number thirteen on the Billboard pop albums chart, but it did not get much play on

303

304

Women Icons of Popular Music

commercial radio or receive the sort of immediate critical acclaim that Blue and Court and Spark garnered. As her career unfolded, though, Hejira was viewed as another turning point for Mitchell, because it enabled the experimentation that would follow. Some fans were frustrated by her changing ways and those who had fallen in love with the confessional Joni Mitchell were disappointed when some of her material in the 1970s turned darker and stayed that way for a while. By the time Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter came out in 1977, her fans’ feelings were solidiﬁed. Washington Post writer Mark Kernis perhaps said it best when he noted that the release “should extinguish even the faintest glimmer of optimism in the most fervent of her diehards and clue everyone in on what the performer has been telling us for over three albums now: Joni Mitchell is not happy” (Kernis 1978). He pronounced the release “the most acidic and strident of Mitchell’s works.” It’s a two-record set concerned with pain and heartbreak: the experiences relayed feel so intensely personal as to be somewhat self-centered. Dissident opinions argued that Mitchell’s earlier work is more universal and thus stronger than the material on Reckless Daughter. Kernis said that when compared with her material of just a few years prior, Mitchell’s work and delivery sports some element of bitterness. On the cover of Don Juan is a photograph of Mitchell as a black man, which is not terribly surprising given her deep affection for jazz music. Don Juan represents another step closer to the most unapologetic of her jazzbased albums, Mingus, which was released in 1979. Planned as a collaboration with the great jazz bassist Charles Mingus, he died before it was completed. Again, it features Pastorius, Wayne Shorter, and Herbie Hancock, resulting in a rather free, arrhythmic approach. The album was not completely embraced at the time of its release—Robert Christgau of the Village Voice granted it a C-plus, and said it was a “brave experiment, but lots of times experiments fail” saying that her voice isn’t “rich enough” to really handle the music. In time, though, like many of Mitchell’s albums, it has received more appreciation (see sidebar). Mitchell was on David Geffen’s label throughout the 1980s and released only three albums. The ﬁrst was Wild Things Run Fast, in 1982, which is more pop-based than her previous few albums. The song “Chinese Café/ Unchained Melody,” took parts of the chorus of the Righteous Brothers song “Unchained Melody” and “(You’re so Square) Baby I Don’t Care” was her take on the Leiber and Stoller song. In 1985 she released the Thomas Dolby– produced Dog Eat Dog, which is an exercise in 1980s synthesizer pop. The work is one of her weaker releases, and it shows signs of her increasing frustration with American culture and the music business. The song “Tax Free,” for instance, shoots criticism at televangelists. The decade was one of transition for her, and Mitchell met Larry Klein, bassist and producer, while working on her album Wild Things Run Fast; they married that year, too. In 1988, Mitchell released Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm. In an interview for the album with Canada’s newspaper The Globe and Mail, she was

Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell’s Jazz: An Artist Dedicated To Her Vision When Joni Mitchell first flirted with improvisation on a piano solo in “The Arrangement” on 1970’s Ladies of the Canyon and found a true folk-fusion groove in Court and Spark, she showed a drive toward innovation. Later in that decade, her jazz-infused concoctions The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Hejira, and Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter gave her some critical success. But Mitchell charted riskier territory with 1979’s Mingus, a tribute to legendary bassist Charles Mingus, and the genre-defying result of her own lyrical interpretations of his standards, supported by jazz greats such as Jaco Pastorius, Herbie Hancock, and Wayne Shorter. Only six of the album’s eleven tracks seem to contain any recognizable musical structure. Mingus had died only months before the album’s release, and many critics argued that Mitchell’s production did a poor job of remembering his legacy. Others observed that she struggled to keep up with chord changes in the more flexible, meditative tracks. However, not all is lost. The funky “Dry Cleaner from Des Moines” recalls her 1975 hit single “In France They Kiss on Main Street” and suggests that when she incorporates jazz into her own style, she succeeds; when she makes jazz her only style, she stumbles. The final piece, her interpretation of “Goodbye Porkpie Hat,” stands alone as a successful jazz chart. Her earlier records, like Mingus, received the criticism that any artistic risk often receives. Although her jazz creations have not sold as well as her folkleaning releases, Joni Mitchell proves that true artists are iconoclasts who follow their muse wherever it leads. Her foray into jazz, albeit experimental and left-of-center, was nevertheless prescient, as artists such as Norah Jones, Madeleine Peyroux, and Britain’s Corinne Bailey Rae and Katie Melua would experience success by blending jazz and popular music in the 2000s. Finally, Mitchell’s stature in jazz music was formally acknowledged, albeit in a lefthanded way, when Herbie Hancock surprised the country with River: The Joni Letters, his album of jazz arrangements of Mitchell’s compositions. The record earned him the coveted Grammy award for Album of the Year.

uncharacteristically relaxed—she is noted for being somewhat impatient with the press and the promotional aspects of her career. When reporter Chris Dafoe suggested that she was a “major cultural ﬁgure of the last half of the twentieth century” she offered a small measure of disagreement, saying she did not think it would be healthy if she saw herself that way. “Bob Dylan may be a major cultural ﬁgure. I think of my role, as I put in a song once—‘chicken scratching for my immortality’ ” (1988). The collaborators are a motley bunch, ranging from the disparate likes of Peter Gabriel, Willie Nelson, Don Henley, Ben Orr, Wayne Shorter (again), and Billy Idol. She said, “I cast voices

305

306

Women Icons of Popular Music

just like I would cast faces for a ﬁlm” (Dafoe 1988). The album also featured the percussion of Manu Katché, who also worked with Peter Gabriel and Sting. On this record, she worked with musician-husband Klein on the 1988 release, lending his music skills to co-write “Lakota” and to write the music portion of “Tea Leaf Prophecy.” The two of them also wrote the music for her next album, Snakes and Ladders, which they produced together. The album’s more memorable track is her duet with Peter Gabriel, “Secret Place.” Mitchell may have tried to keep herself creatively engaged during the 1980s, but her album sales were nothing in comparison to those of the 1970s. By the end of the 1980s, her record sales had dipped from more than a million to under 500,000 (Holden 1991). The Autumn of Her Career: The 1990s and Onward After twenty years of writing and recording music, it seemed at times that Mitchell was still dogged by the notion that fans want her to write material more like her work in the early to mid-1970s, where the lyrics were written in ﬁrst person and the songs were shorter, more melodic, and radio-friendly. Rolling Stone writer David Wild brought the issue up again in a 1992 interview. He asked her what she thought about fans who resist her experimentation and who still want material from her “brokenhearted waif mode” (Wild 1992). Mitchell responded, “This is what I think about those people: They want, they want, they want. However, if I actually gave them what they wanted, then they’d just get sick of it” (Wild 1992). In the 1990s, she released only four albums, and through the decade critics really started to begin to see the impact of her work on an upcoming generation. By the end of that decade, the genre that Mitchell helped deﬁne had come back into fashion, and male and female artists alike were openly acknowledging her as an icon. But she was going through another transition, too, as her marriage to Klein dissolved later in the decade. Regardless of what some diehard fans were still expecting from her, Mitchell was never one to rest on her laurels or creatively stagnate. She continued to create work that was complex, taking inspiration from unlikely places for a pop musician. For example, Night Ride Home, released in 1991, features a reworking of William Butler Yeats’s “The Second Coming,” which predicted a vast cultural upheaval and mourned a turn toward mediocrity and status quo and uncreative thinking. Melbourne, Australia’s Sunday Herald Sun thought that the album “almost returns to the elegant simplicity” of Blue, perhaps because the middle-aged love songs that comprise the album can be attributed to that description, too (McClellan 1991). Her voice appears deeper and more limited in its range, thanks to age and her steady cigarette-smoking habit. Night Ride Home also features extensive collaboration with her husband Larry Klein, such as in “Nothing Can Be Done”—she wrote the lyrics and her much younger—thirty-four to her forty-seven years—husband wrote the music.

Joni Mitchell

307

The 1994 release Turbulent Indigo featured a Van Gogh–styled self-portrait on the cover and songs with Nobody ever said to Van such gloomy titles like “Sex Kills,” “The Magdalene Gogh, “Hey, paint ‘A Starry Laundries,” “ Not to Blame.” “Last Chance Lost,” and Night’ again man.” He “The Sire of Sorrow,” which uses elements of a Greek painted it, and that was it. chorus and is parenthetically titled “Job’s Sad Song.” Only the ﬁrst song “Sunny Sunday” suggests brightness; the rest of the album builds off the political and social commentary she had started to develop in Dog Eat Dog and Chalk Mark. Produced by Mitchell and Klein, the album’s tracks are all her songs except “How You Stop,” which was written by Dan Hartman and Charlie Midnight, and “Yvette in English,” which she co-wrote with David Crosby. Once again, Wayne Shorter plays on most of the tracks, and Mitchell plays guitar, percussion, keyboards, and “high strung guitar.” Turbulent Indigo peaked at forty-seven on the Billboard 200 chart and earned her two Grammy Awards (Best Album Package and Best Pop Vocal Album). It was one of her more straightforward albums in years. Oddly, though, it also marked the dissolution of her marriage to Larry Klein. In 1996, Mitchell released a pair of albums, Hits and Misses. The cover art of Hits features a beautifully photographed Mitchell lying on the ground in a chalk outline to suggest she’d been hit. She agreed to the anthology of her hits, which features most of her earlier folk rock hits, as long as she could compile Misses, with more challenging songs from the Mingus album, as well as “Hejira,” “Sex Kills,” and other gems that were worth revisiting. The collections seemed to be timed to capitalize on the resurgence of singer/songwriters whose lineage can easily be traced to Mitchell, such as the innovative, unclassiﬁable pianist and singer Tori Amos and the sweet soprano of Dar Williams, whose hyper-literate ruminations on love and life suggest Mitchell’s brighter, less emotionally complicated side. When Taming of the Tiger was released in 1998, some critics and fans reacted negatively to its biting social and political criticism, aimed at religion; lawyers; the shallow, ephemeral nature of fame; and a general discontent with the music business. Mitchell developed writer’s block because the response affected her so intensely. Taming of the Tiger would be her last album of new, original material for almost a decade; shortly after its release, she announced that she would retire from music. Looking back, she still asserted her predictions about the world were accurate, but people were not ready to hear it. Nevertheless, to fulﬁll her contract, she released a couple of more albums of standards and some of her older songs in 2000 and 2002, but she made her displeasure with it public. In an interview with the Ottawa Citizen in 2006, she said that “[t]he record labels are criminally insane . . . ugly, screwed up, crooked, uncreative, selﬁsh,” and shared an anecdote about how a label honcho at Reprise likened the process of selling albums to selling cars and told her “we just don’t know what to do with your car.” However, in that same article,

308

Women Icons of Popular Music

Mitchell declared that she had come out of retirement to offer “courage through tough times” and write new music. “I was pretty sure that was it, but the music just started coming and so I’m going with it. It feels good” (Fischer 2006). In fall 2007, Mitchell released that album, Shine, through the label Hear Music, which is owned by Starbucks Coffee Company. One of the songs is inspired by the 1908 Rudyard Kipling poem “If” with Mitchell taking the form and changing it to reﬂect her own thinking; the song’s lyrics read like a personal mantra for survival in a difﬁcult world. She starts each new verse with the word “if,” and lyrics include reﬂections such as “If you can trust yourself when everybody doubted you” and “If you can dream and not make your dreams your master.” Politics are not far from her mind, either, as the song “Holy War” rails against waging religious battles and is a not-so-veiled attack on the war in Iraq; Mitchell does not spare either governments or terrorists. Mitchell included a new version of “Big Yellow Taxi,” which shows off the smoky depths of her aged voice. The personnel of Shine include some appearances from longstanding drummer Brian Blade, bassist (and former husband) Larry Klein, and saxophonist Bob Sheppard. Given her misgivings about record labels, it is intriguing that she went this route instead of a strictly electronic format. However, Hear Music emerged to embrace the atypical distribution methods of its Starbucks coffee shops, along with traditional outlets. Mitchell is in good company, as Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney, two other legacy artists, recently moved to Hear Music as well. The record is also available electronically for downloading over the Internet, but adding to the irony is the fact that Mitchell does not own a computer or cell phone and does not use e-mail. Indeed, as she has gotten older, she has comfortably settled into a cantankerous, outspoken woman who has readily railed against the press, the music business, technology, the U.S. government, feminists, and more.

MISSION, MOTIVATION, PROCESS Mitchell’s childhood experience with learning piano inﬂuenced her, but not in a way that one might expect. Her piano teacher was ruthless and slapped her knuckles with a ruler if she did not play properly. Mitchell’s dislike of authority was already ﬁrmly in place by this age—she was not even ten years old— but looking back, she can understand what her music teacher was trying to get her to accomplish. Her piano teacher wanted her to copy what others had done; that is, to be able to play the great works of music. She scorned Mitchell’s improvisation and composition. It confused Mitchell, who explained that in art school innovation is everything, but in music, you are taught to play the important works and then you are supposed to duplicate it. She described it

Joni Mitchell

309

thusly, “[S]o I have more of a painter’s ego or approach, which is to make fresh, individuated stuff that Lambert, Hendricks and Ross were my Beatles. In high has my blood in it on the tracks” (Bego 2005, 19). She discovered jazz in high school, speciﬁcally the school, theirs was the record I vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, and later wore thin, the one I knew all the works of Miles Davis. She called the Davis records the words to. she favored—Sketches of Spain, Nefertiti, In a Silent Way—her “private music.” She kept jazz separate from her own work and did not conceive that she could be a jazz artist. “I only thought of it as something sacred and unattainable” (Bego 2005, 25). Mitchell said she mimicked the style of Joan Baez and Judy Collins. Even when she was starting to ﬁnd her own voice, music was still a hobby in her mind, not a possible career. Regardless of any perceived copying, the critics loved her from the start. Naturally, many artists dabble with imitation to develop their craft. Mitchell was doing just that from the start, showing some compelling signs of variety and complexity—which also could be labeled as inconsistency. Her idols are abstract expressionist Pablo Picasso and the incredibly proliﬁc and inventive trumpeter and band leader Miles Davis. Mitchell ardently and unapologetically identiﬁed with these two artists, who are supremely talented, inﬂuential, and groundbreaking but also extremely misogynistic. Acknowledging that these heroes are men, and that they “are monsters, unfortunately,” she was able to see their importance as artists and separate their personalities from their art. “[W]e have this one thing in common: they were restless. I don’t know any women role models for that” (Wild 1992). As soon as she emerged and her music started to gain her press, many journalists and critics described Mitchell as a talented songwriter and made careful note of her gender, speculating on its possible inﬂuence on her viewpoint. Throughout her career, she seemed to struggle somewhat with gender identity— she is not typically feminine in her perspective as a songwriter and does not readily identify herself as a feminist, for example. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Mitchell seemed to insist that she wanted to be seen not as the best female songwriter, but as one of the best songwriters of her generation, period, irrespective of gender. “A good piece of art should be androgynous,” she said (Wild 1992). Regardless, biographer Mark Bego called her “the ultimate female folk troubadour” (Bego 2005, 7). She has bristled at the claim that she is the best female singer-songwriter and has repeatedly resisted the term that she is a feminist, saying it’s too divisive. But some critics understand that her music transcends gender. Writing in Elvis Costello, Joni Mitchell and the Torch Song Tradition, author Larry David Smith showed some humor in his description: “Joni Mitchell is neither the greatest female singer-songwriter ever, nor the greatest right-handed female singer-songwriter, nor the greatest blonde right-handed female singer-songwriter; rather she is one of the greatest

310

Women Icons of Popular Music

singer-songwriters, period” (Smith 2004). He even went so far as to say that including gender in the conversation was “insulting,” so great was her artistry and widespread her inﬂuence. To some extent, it was difﬁcult for Mitchell to explain her music to other musicians—she lacked the precise theoretical language and instead would resort to metaphors. Her open tuning style is especially unusual. Smith wrote that she was a sonic trailblazer who left new ideas in her wake for other songwriters. She made it possible for other artists to mine the depths of their own interiority and subjectivity. She dabbled in world music before others even considered it as a place to look for inspiration. In some ways, Mitchell can be viewed as the stereotypical temperamental artist. She is not the most charitable when it comes to interviews and likes to preserve her own creative space when she is working. For example, when she started to work on Chalk Mark in Peter Gabriel’s studio, she had to ﬁgure out its direction on her own before anyone was allowed into the space, including her husband and co-producer Larry Klein. The album was recorded in a number of studios in the United States and Great Britain, some of it during the Chernobyl explosion in the former Soviet Union. She said that it affected her thinking during the recording process. “The globe seemed so small and we seemed so fragile. You realize that nothing is ‘way over there’ ” (Dafoe 1988). War and retaliation were possibilities, it seemed. Consequently, some of the tracks on that album have a feeling of instability, of atomization. “The Tea Leave Prophesy” takes World War II as its setting, and “The Beat of Black Wings” tells the story of a Vietnam veteran. During the 1980s, though, some critics and fans thought her albums were getting too dark and negative, but she has been quick to point out that black humor and love of language guided her during this time. Reﬂecting on some of the songs in her subsequent album, Night Ride Home, she said many of the songs are variations of the key of C, mostly C major. “People like major chords—major chords are happy, positive chords. It’s a very sunny modality, this album and friendly. It’s not that it’s a smile button in any way, because there are moments of minor, where it’s tragic reevaluation and yadda-yadda” (Gilbert 1991). She also said that she was not intentionally leaving behind the darker material from the 1980s, but that “only a positive, sunny chord would do. I kind of stroked myself and wrote accordingly and found out other people needed the stroke of those warmer chords, too” (Gilbert 1991). Mitchell was immediately tagged as a confessional singer/songwriter. But as much as her songwriting is imbued with her experience, and as much as she makes that experience plain to the listener, she urged fans to not be so quick to assume she was always singing about her life. Mitchell also looked at it as a form of performance, of acting. In a 1991 interview with the Boston Globe, she said, “It makes no difference if it’s you or not. It’s life. You can play any character with vitality” (Gilbert 1991).

Joni Mitchell

LEGACY AND OTHER INTERESTS Despite the fact that her music has left a lasting imprint on other artists, especially a younger generation of female songwriters and singers, Mitchell was quick to distance herself from such praise and said that such comparisons have the potential to be destructive. In an interview with the Boston Globe in 1991, the reporter recounted that Suzanne Vega, Tracy Chapman, Shawn Colvin, Ferron, and Rickie Lee Jones, among others, have been compared to her. “It’s unfair to both of us. It robs her of her identity and shows how very little they know about the intricacy of my work” (Gilbert 1991). Certainly, the mark of a songwriter can somewhat be measured by how frequently other artists invoke you, revere you, and cover your songs. Mitchell is one of those artists whose songs are often covered by others. Bristling when a reporter refers to some of her biggest songs as hits, the ones that made her a star, she instead called them “the most gregarious of my children” (Wild 1992). So gregarious, in fact, that others want to befriend them, too, and use them for interesting purposes. “Big Yellow Taxi,” she told Rolling Stone, was used as an assignment by a third-grade teacher in New Jersey who had his students illustrate it. She called them charming. She also said that the song “Both Sides Now” has been translated into Chinese and then back into English, and in so doing, got the title “Joni’s Theory of Relativity.” Additionally, Frank Sinatra, Cleo Lane, and Bing Crosby have all sung that song. She said her philosophical take on life, “Circle Game,” has been used at eighth-grade graduation ceremonies, and she thinks it an apt environment for such a song (Wild 1992). Throughout her touring and recording, Mitchell never stopped painting, even though she never became strictly a working ﬁne artist. Many of her album covers feature her own work and are of her own design, from the Van Gogh–inspired cover and artwork of Turbulent Indigo to the photo collage on the cover of Night Ride Home. She does not, however, sell her own artwork and rarely displays it. One of those rare occasions was a June 2000 exhibit called Voices: Joni Mitchell presented at the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. The exhibition featured both ﬁgurative and abstract paintings, some of her album art, and self-portraits along with those of famous friends such as Neil Young. In 2006, the Lev Moross Gallery in Los Angeles displayed sixty new artworks in an exhibit called Green Flag Song. The works grew from a series of photographs that Mitchell took of a malfunctioning television set and offer her commentary of social and political issues. In April 2007, Nonesuch Records released a compilation called A Tribute to Joni Mitchell, in which artists as diverse as Sufjan Stevens, Bjork, Brad Mehldau, Cassandra Wilson, Annie Lennox, James Taylor, Emmylou Harris, Prince, Sarah McLachlan, Elvis Costello. and k.d. lang pay homage to the artist by reinterpreting one of her works. Mitchell’s songs take on a new life as

311

312

Women Icons of Popular Music

rendered by these singular artists. Each artist offers his or her reﬂections on the particular song and the way that he or she has approached it, making for an intimate musical experience. Also in spring 2007, the Alberta Ballet Company of Canada announced it would use some of her songs and her art in a ballet called the Fiddle and the Drum. Mitchell has received three Grammys, two Junos, and a Gemini Award for Best Performance. In 1995 she was given Billboard’s highest award, the Century Award, and in 1996 she shared the Polar Music Prize awarded by Royal Swedish Academy of Music, worth $150,000. Additionally, in her homeland she was given the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award and National Academy of Songwriters Lifetime Achievement award. Mitchell was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. It is difﬁcult to understate her inﬂuence—virtually any creative musician who emerged alongside or after her rise to fame probably cannot escape her reach. Mitchell’s artistry is one that has consistently put her ahead of her time, whether it pertains to intensely personal songwriting, incorporation of world music, or the infusion of jazz. After nearly forty years of writing and recording music, it is probably most apt to say that her 2007 record Shine sounds like Joni Mitchell, because it ably incorporates all of those aforementioned elements.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Clouds. Reprise, 1969 Ladies of the Canyon. Reprise, 1970 Blue. Reprise, 1971 Court and Spark. Asylum, 1974 Miles of Aisles. Asylum, 1975 Hejira. Asylum, 1976

FURTHER READING Aikins, Mary. “Heart of a Prairie Girl.” Reader’s Digest (July 2005). Ankeny, Jason. “Joni Mitchell Biography.” All Music Guide. Available online at www .allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=ADFEAEE47817D849AA7E20C79 A3E52DBB57DF702FE5AFB86112F0456D3B82D4BBD0E4FE06BC2AB81B3 E577B666ADFF2EAC160BD9CFEF5CF9D4765D40&sql=11:3ifexqe5ldte~T1. Bego, Mark. Joni Mitchell. Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2005. Christgau, Robert. “Review. Joni Mitchell, Hejira.” Village Voice (February 14, 1977). Christgau, Robert. “Review. Joni Mitchell, Mingus.” Village Voice (October 9, 1979). Crouse, Timothy. “Blue. Album Review.” Rolling Stone 88 (August 5, 1971). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/jonimitchell/albums/album/169213/ review/6067564/blue.

Joni Mitchell

Dafoe, Chris. “Mitchell’s Not a Prophet, But a ‘Witness To My Times.’ ” Globe and Mail, Toronto, Canada. (March 25, 1988). Davis, Stephen. “For the Roses. Review.” Rolling Stone 125 (January 4, 1972). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/jonimitchell/albums/album/119437/ review/5941475/for_the_roses. Fischer, Doug. “Joni Mitchell’s Fighting Words: When the World Becomes a ‘Massive Mess with Nobody at the Helm,’ Says the Canadian Singer-Songwriter, ‘It’s Time for Artists to Make their Mark.’ ” Ottawa Citizen (October 7, 2006). Gilbert, Matthew. “Joni Mitchell Comes in From the Cold.” Boston Globe (March 17, 1991). Hilburn, Robert. “Joni Mitchell Looks at Both Sides Now: Her Hits—and Misses.” Reprinted from Los Angeles Times? in South Coast Today (December 7, 1996), New Bedford, Massachusetts. Available online at archive.southcoasttoday.com/ daily/12-96/12-07-96/b01ae065.htm. Holden, Stephen. “Joni Mitchell Finds the Peace of Middle Age.” New York Times (March 17, 1991). Kernis, Mark. “ ‘Daughter’: Bitterness With a Steely Edge.” Washington Post (January 11, 1978). Landau, Jon. “Court and Spark. Review.” Rolling Stone 155 (February 28, 1974). McClellan, M. “Joni Mitchell Returns to Past Glories.” Sunday Herald Sun, Melbourne, Australia (July 21, 1991). Mitchell, Joni. Artist Web site, independently run, see www.jonimitchell.com. Peterson, Karla. “Dial it Down, Lose the Signal: For Artists, Opinions and Creativity Go Hand in Hand.” San Diego Union-Tribune (March 31, 2003). Sander, Ellen. “Three Who Sing Their Own Songs.” New York Times (December 29, 1968). Shelton, Robert. “Singer-Songwriters are Making a Comeback.” New York Times (July 5, 1968). Smith, Larry David. Elvis Costello, Joni Mitchell, and the Torch Song Tradition. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2004. Von Tersch, Gary. “Ladies of the Canyon. Review.” Rolling Stone 60 (June 11, 1970). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/jonimitchell/albums/album/117326/ review/5940401/ladies_of_the_canyon.

313

Courtesy of Photofest

Dolly Parton

316

Women Icons of Popular Music

OVERVIEW Though she began her career as a singer, Dolly Parton has also taken on the duties of songwriter, savvy marketer, entrepreneur, actress, and children’s book author. Growing up in poverty in Tennessee, Parton started performing at a very young age. She got her start in country music but ultimately gained international success and achieved crossover status as her albums hit other Billboard charts. Parton acted in ﬁlms starting in the 1980s and she is especially known for her memorable turn in the comedy 9 to 5. In many ways, her story is an example of the American dream—a poor, young girl from a rural, hardscrabble background who achieves tremendous international success and wealth—but Parton worked hard for everything she achieved, and her quest was not easy. With nearly forty years in the music business, she owns Dollywood, a theme park named after her; Dixie Stampede, an entertainment venue; and music studios, production companies, and toy companies. In addition to gaining her start on a country-western television program, Parton was the ﬁrst woman to host her own country-western nationally syndicated television variety show, Dolly, which only lasted a season (1976–1977). From the beginning of her career, Parton has carefully constructed her image in a way that both played into and subverted men’s ideas of beauty— she has always been perfectly poised, polished, and dressed in an outﬁt that shows off her curvaceous ﬁgure. But Parton was no fool. Her desire to create and control her own image showed a shrewd, subversive feminist, even if she never outwardly identiﬁed herself with the rhetoric of the women’s movement. She instead appealed to both her male and female fans through her keen intuition of people and through the emotional components of her songs and the stories they tell. Still, through it all Parton remained preternaturally perky, and she is hardly ever photographed or seen without a big smile, perfect make-up and hair, and her signature sparkly, form-ﬁtting clothing. Parton has been extremely proliﬁc and extraordinarily successful. Her albums have made more than 100 appearances on the Billboard charts since her career started in 1968. Most of her albums have landed on more than one chart simultaneously—usually both the country and pop album charts. In the later years of her career, starting in the late 1980s with Rainbow, some albums have even landed on the Billboard 200. In 2005, Those Were the Days hit the country, Internet, independent, and Billboard 200 charts. She has had several number-one albums, starting with Here You Come Again and New Harvest, First Gathering, both of which hit the top slot in the country albums chart in 1977, followed by the number one Heartbreaker in 1978, 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs in 1980, which was a signiﬁcant pop success, too, hitting number eleven. Trio, with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris, hit number one on the country chart in 1987, followed by Eagle When She Flies in 1991, the last album

Dolly Parton

of hers to hit number one in the country albums category. Her singles have been similarly spectacular performers, with about 130 appearances on various charts including the country and pop singles charts, Adult Contemporary, Billboard Hot 100, and even the seemingly unlikely appearances of “Peace Train” in 1997 on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play and Hot Dance Music/ Maxi-Singles charts. Her ﬁrst gold album was Here You Come Again in December 1977, which was a surprise considering that her recording career was nearly ten years old at the point. It went platinum just four months after its gold certiﬁcation in April 1978. Six more of her albums achieved this status, including Greatest Hits (1986), Eagle When She Flies (1992), and Slow Dancing With the Moon (1993). The 1983 album with Kenny Rogers, Islands in the Stream, went platinum, and their Once Upon a Christmas collaboration went double platinum by 1989. Parton has received ﬁve Grammy Awards: In 1978, she nabbed Best Female Country Vocal Performance for the album Here You Come Again; in 1981, she got two for the song “9 to 5”—Best Female Country Vocal Performance and Best Country Song. Then, nearly twenty years later, she received a Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album for The Grass is Blue, and Best Female Country Vocal Performance for the single “Shine” in 2001. Parton has been extremely successful in garnering country music awards too, and from 1968 to 2006, she received nine Country Music Association Awards and forty-three nominations both as a solo artist and a collaborator with the likes of Porter Wagoner, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, and Vince Gill. In both 1976 and 1978 she was deemed “Female Vocalist of the Year.” Worldwide, she has sold 100 million records. Parton is best-known for the songs “Coat of Many Colors,” which is also the name of a children’s book she co-authored with Judith Sutton; “Jolene”; “Kentucky Gambler”; “I Will Always Love You,” which Whitney Houston belted out famously in the ﬁlm The Bodyguard, starring Kevin Costner; “But You Know I Love You”; “Tennessee Homesick Blues”; and the pop hit from the ﬁlm of the same name, “9 to 5.” Parton is a shrewd marketer—the image of her as a big-breasted, dumb blonde has been an act—and it’s enabled her to use her fame as a foray into other creative endeavors, whether it is ﬁlm, popular music, children’s books, or theme parks. Furthermore, her crossover success paved the way for what would happen in country music in Nashville years later, enabling the success of artists such as Faith Hill, Shania Twain, the Dixie Chicks, Jo Dee Messina, and scores of other country-pop artists. Additionally, Parton’s entrepreneurial success in branding herself has inspired many other women, whether it is Jennifer Lopez, Beyoncé Knowles, or other singer-actresses who have started clothing lines, created signature perfumes, or other products bearing their name (see sidebar). Her savvy approach to her career has certainly made her an icon.

317

318

Women Icons of Popular Music

The Branding of an Artist As a musician and businesswoman, Dolly Parton has blazed a trail with accomplishments that range from not only platinum-selling albums but a successful theme park, Dollywood, along with television, film, and other businesses. Artists such as Mariah Carey, Britney Spears, Beyoncé Knowles, Missy Elliott, and Gwen Stefani have followed in her path by launching (or endorsing) a multitude of products and business endeavors, ranging from a line of clothing or a signature perfume, to a record label or a production company. One of the most noteworthy artists to emerge in the 1990s is Jennifer Lopez, or J. Lo, who has established perhaps the most consistently profitable brand image that extends well beyond her own musical career. As a bilingual entertainer, Lopez’s reach extends even further; she has released albums in both English and Spanish. Like Parton, Lopez is an actress, having starred as the lead in the drama Selena to recent roles in the romantic comedies Maid in Manhattan and Shall We Dance? Through her own Nuyorican Productions she has spearheaded independent films such as Bordertown and El Cantante. Lopez served as an executive producer for the 2007 MTV reality show DanceLife and the television miniseries Como Ama Una Mujer for Univision. Her branding extends into fashion. Under her Sweetface Fashion Company, formed in 2001, she has launched eleven product categories that now encompass handbags, lingerie, and swimwear. Her foray started with the sportswear line JLO by Jennifer Lopez and the fragrance Glow by JLO, followed by several more hugely successful fragrances. She even opened the California restaurant Madre’s. Her brands reinforce her image as both the approachable “Jenny from the block” and a stylish, sophisticated Latina artist, setting a new standard for female artists. Forbes estimated her to be the ninth wealthiest woman in entertainment.

EARLY YEARS Dolly Parton was the fourth of twelve children, and she grew up in a rural area near Locust Ridge, Tennessee, on a farm on the outskirts of the Smoky Mountains National Forest. Her family struggled with poverty while she was growing up, which made her the target of teasing at school. But Parton grew up happy in a house full of people, with attentive and loving parents. Her mother Avie Lee Owens got married when she was ﬁfteen and had twelve children by the time she was thirty-ﬁve. Parton described her father as a hard worker and her mother as a woman with a keen imagination. Music, though, helped keep the family together and happy. There were always hymns, and there was always church music. In fact, many of her siblings have worked or

Dolly Parton

319

continue to work as professional musicians. Although her father Robert Lee Parton was a farmer and did Songwriting is my way of not play an instrument, her mother, who was half- channeling my feelings and Cherokee, played guitar, and her grandfather, Rever- my thoughts. . . . My head end Jake Owens, was a ﬁddler and songwriter. Her would explode if I didn’t get older sister, Willadeene, is a published poet. some of that stuff out. Not Before music caught her attention in a signiﬁcant everything I write is good, but way, Parton loved stories and loved to read, especially it’s all good for me—like Cinderella-type fairy tales that suggest a rags-to-riches, therapy. American transcendence of class and culture. In the foreword to her autobiography Dolly: My Life and Other Unﬁnished Business, she said, “[E]ven when I was in school and was supposed to give a book report, I would make up the story, make up the ﬁctitious author, then get up and talk about it” (Parton 1994, foreword). She admitted in her autobiography that she would rather have been daydreaming, writing stories, or reading than outside plowing the ﬁelds or helping on the farm, but she always tried to do her part. Parton fashioned herself a guitar from an old mandolin and two bass guitar strings when she was around nine years old. She ﬁgured that she had “thousands of songs, boxes of songs,” and she often would listen to adult conversations and make up songs about them, with a particular gift for rhyme (Nash 1978, 13). To practice and to get a little bit of peace and quiet, Parton would take her guitar outside to the barn or into the woods to play by herself. Even from a young age, Parton knew she was different. Growing up poor in a large family required a mix of improvisation, resourcefulness, and creativity. Parton’s ﬁrst song was about a corncob doll that her mother made for her. Her mother also quilted and sewed, and when Parton was a child, her mother made her a colorful coat using different scraps of fabric. The coat, too, would go on to inspire a song later in her career. Rather than make it match, or try to make it match, her mother decided that it made sense to make it out of the “brightest, most different colors she could ﬁnd. This was going to be a colorful coat with no apologies,” Parton explained (Parton 1994, 37). Parton was proud of it and could not wait to wear it to school the next day, but unfortunately, other children were not so kind. They teased her, calling it “a bunch of rags” (Parton 1994, 38). She was determined, though, to be a star—she would listen to the strains of the Grand Ole Opry on her father’s radio before falling asleep—and told her father that some day she would appear on it. When she was eight, she had a debut on the WIVK Knoxville’s show The Cas Walker Farm and Home Hour, and for two years appeared sporadically. By the time she was ten, Walker asked her to be a regular, and she was paid about $20 per week; she would perform on the show for a total of eight years, while she was still going to school. In 1959, at the age of thirteen, she debuted at the Grand Ole Opry—no small feat—and the next year, she recorded her very ﬁrst single for Goldband.

320

Women Icons of Popular Music

It was called “Puppy Love.” Based on all this early success, Parton received a recording contract at age fourteen with Mercury Records, but her 1962 debut It’s Sure Gonna Hurt did not fare well, so she was immediately dropped. Over the course of the next ﬁve years, she continued to write songs and look for a new contract as well as record a number of songs, many of which were reissued later. In high school, she played snare drum in the marching band, keeping up her interest in music; it did not require her to learn how to read music. After graduating from high school in 1964, she moved to Nashville and stayed with her uncle Bill Owens, where they took their songs around the city hoping for a contract. Here, while starting to put her career together, Parton met her future husband, Carl Dean. They were married two years later on May 30, 1966, in Ringgold, Georgia. She continued to write music with her uncle, but they were not having much success as a team, so instead Parton started recording demos and writing songs. In late 1965, Fred Foster signed her to his publishing house Combine Music and then to Monument Records. Her ﬁrst records were marketed to a pop audience and her second one, “Happy Happy Birthday Baby” almost made the charts. But in 1966, Bill Phillips hit the Top 10 with two of Parton and Owens’s songs—“Put It Off Until Tomorrow” and “The Company You Keep.” This helped pave the way for her breakthrough, the tongue-in-cheek 1967 song “Dumb Blonde,” which hit number twenty-four, followed by “Something Fishy,” which reached seventeen. “Dumb Blonde” caught the ear of country musician and television personality Porter Wagoner, who then hired her for his syndicated television show in Nashville. Her appearances with him singing duets made her well known and led to a nearly ten-year television collaboration and recording partnership. Their duet “The Last Thing on My Mind” went to number seven in the beginning of 1968. The partnership spawned a handful of Top 10 hits and, as per Wagoner’s plan, enabled Parton to start releasing her own solo work simultaneously. “Just Because I’m a Woman,” her ﬁrst solo single, reached seventeen and became a moderate hit. More important, the song established her as a force to be reckoned with and as a smart observer of the double standards between men and women. Parton took issue with the norms of culturally accepted behavior, speciﬁcally, the idea that men are allowed to be cads and women are supposed to be innocent and genteel. The song comes from the album of the same name, and several of the twelve compositions were her own, including “You’re Gonna Be Sorry” and “The Bridge.” At the time, Parton was only twenty-two years old. It is one of those albums where the record company, producers, and artists work together well enough to create a piece of excellence. For the rest of the decade, Parton’s solo efforts were interspersed and made possible by those duet albums and performances with Wagoner. Onstage and even on recordings, the pair had a warm, witty repartee and beautiful harmonization that fans responded to, so much so that some wondered if they were married. At this time, female performers were somewhat unusual.

Dolly Parton

Additionally Parton at ﬁrst had a difﬁcult time gaining acceptance on Wagoner’s show—the crowd missed singer Norma Jean, whom Parton replaced. By 1969 Wagoner was her co-producer, and Parton, for him, was a ﬁnancial investment. Frustrated by the fact that she was not breaking through, Wagoner thought she ought to sing the Jimmie Rodgers tune “Mule Skinner Blues (Blue Yodel No. 8),” a goofy gimmick of a move. This song hit number three, and it whetted audiences’ appetite for her next song, “Joshua,” which was her ﬁrst number one single in 1970.

CAREER PATH Struggling To Find Her Freedom as a Solo Artist: The 1970s “Joshua,” the title track of her album, hit number one on the country singles chart, while the album, released in April 1971, hit sixteen on the country chart and 198 on the Billboard pop albums chart. Its success brought more chart-topping songs, including her signature, autobiographical tune “Coat of Many Colors,” from the album of the same name, released October of the same year. The song hit number four in 1971, and she wrote seven of the ten songs on the record, which range from country-pop, to sad songs, to ballads, from “Traveling Man” to “My Blue Tears,” which were also modest hits. The other three songs on Coat were written by Wagoner, but the strength of the record continued to show people that she was capable of handling diverse material. The album reached number seven on the country chart. Parton’s albums from the early 1970s show a woman coming into her own, and wrestling with themes of love and loss ﬁltered through the lens of a life still deeply touched by the memories of her upbringing. In some ways, her 1973 release My Tennessee Mountain Home epitomizes that. In terms of the content, the songs, which Parton wrote, look back with nostalgia on her upbringing. Her sense of humor surfaced in “In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad),” and her longing for the simpler days of her youth was evident in songs such as “The Wrong Direction Home.” Parton reﬂected on leaving home to pursue her career with only “a suitcase in my hand and a hope in my heart.” She remembered details such as hummingbirds and honeybees in the yard, which paint a vivid picture in the ﬁrst verse, but the sentiment of the refrain is almost a contradiction, where the tug between nostalgia and reality is felt: “But I’m headed in the wrong direction home.” In hindsight, the album is especially intriguing when viewed in the context of her later bluegrass albums, which would truly mark her return to roots music. Parton’s talent for effortlessly blending various genres was way ahead of its time, and her songs were already starting to sound like classics. Perhaps her most signiﬁcant success of the early part of this decade came from her single “Jolene,” which reached number one in 1974. With emotional

321

322

Women Icons of Popular Music

detail, honesty, and a tension that underpins its country roots and her sweet, trilling soprano, it is no surprise that the song has been covered by dozens of singers, some of them seemingly unlikely candidates, such as singer Patti Smith and the rock band The White Stripes. Throughout the song, the protagonist begs Jolene “not to take my man” even though she says “I cannot compete with you Jolene.” According to biographer Alanna Nash, the song’s composition was unusual for several reasons because it starts on a minor chord—which lends a sense of unease—and quickly returns to a minor chord. The repetition of the woman’s name is insistent, desperate, and Parton’s double-tracked vocals make a chilling and compelling country-pop song. The lyrics are made more compelling by bongos playing the offbeat and a complicated, driving guitar lick. The fact that the song was not easy to classify worked in her favor, because its success enabled her to convince Wagoner that she should be able to keep including such eclectic choices on her records to showcase her versatility, which she did with the light “Love is Like a Butterﬂy.” Many biographers and country music writers considered this song as her point of departure—symbolically speaking at least—from Wagoner, although she was still under contract with him as her producer for two more years. Their partnership had been extremely fruitful—it helped her gain an audience and it helped him retain his—but he resented her attempts to launch a solo career. At this point she felt that staying with him was holding her back musically. Ultimately, Parton stopped traveling with Wagoner and left the show in 1974. However, there were detractors in Nashville who felt that she was not talented enough to make it her own, which was a surprising opinion considering how strong, complex, and formidable her presence had been from the very start of her career. Others scoffed at her desires to reach crossover success, but those critics would largely fall silent by the end of the decade. In discussing her split with Wagoner, Parton said that it was hard for her to do her own thing within someone else’s vision, even though sometimes some of her ideas came through. The last album Wagoner would produce for her was All I Can Do in 1976, and it went to number three on the top country chart. Going out on her own was not an easy decision for Parton, though— they had a long history by this time and a pronounced charisma between them during performances. By the mid-1970s, Parton had ﬁrmly established herself as a country superstar—she had won the CMA Award for Female Vocalist of the Year in 1975 and 1976. Her next most signiﬁcant release is arguably the 1977 album Here You Come Again, the ﬁrst of her records to sell a million copies. It hit the number one slot on the country chart, and the title song went to number one on the country charts and number two on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart. The record is considered her ﬁrst pop crossover hit, and earned her a

I need my husband for love and other men for my work. But I don’t depend on any man for my strength.

Dolly Parton

CMA Award for Entertainer of the Year and a Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance—the ﬁrst of three times she would win such an award. The production of the album was not particularly “country,” favoring a more commercial and less hardcore country feel. The title track is catchy but sounds like a smooth, late 1970s pop production; it was also written not by Parton but by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, the well-known songwriting team responsible for the hit “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin.’” Throughout the album the songs feel like a sprinkling of country and pop put together. Standout Parton-penned tracks include “It’s All Wrong, But It’s All Right” and “Two Doors Down.” On this record she also covers the Kenny Rogers tune “Sweet Music Man.” Although the record still shows evidence of country music’s sentimentality, the title track directly courted popular appeal. Around the time of its release she made regular appearances on the Johnny Carson show. The record’s success helped her sell out tour performances and win accolades from critics. In August 1977, country music writer Chet Flippo wrote an extensive proﬁle of her in the rock music magazine Rolling Stone. Flippo caught her at a point in her career in which she deliberately changed her direction to seek a larger (pop) audience. “This is a new freedom for me. Just total self-expression and daring to be brave, just to really see music the way that I totally feel it. I just had to make a total break in order to see this thing through and it was time” (Flippo 1977). By the late 1970s, she made it known in newspaper articles that she wanted to appeal to a younger audience and that she was interested in a movie career and had signed a three-picture deal with Twentieth Century Fox. The 1980s: Illness, Movies, Theme Parks, Stampedes In the early 1980s, Parton experienced some ill health. She already had fallen victim to throat ailments and vocal troubles as a result of extensive touring, but these new problems were gynecological, which she kept hidden from most of her family. Parton said she did not need to have a full hysterectomy but that she had “some partial things done” in a surgery in September 1982 after nearly collapsing onstage in Indianapolis (Haller 1984). After that experience, she became depressed and put on some weight, which took her a few years to lose. Around this time, in women’s magazines writers were quick to emphasize and paint a portrait of her as everywoman, thus deemphasizing her extraordinary qualities. Parton became a woman who struggled with her weight and with fertility. Truthfully, though, the 1980s were a time of transition for Parton, both personally and professionally, starting off the decade recuperating from a partial hysterectomy, gaining weight and then losing it by 1986, and expanding her career into ﬁlms and her own business ventures. Despite the expansion of her interests, one thing remained consistent: the public face

323

324

Women Icons of Popular Music

Parton presented. Whenever Parton was interviewed and asked personal questions, she revealed just enough to suggest the response was personal but did not really make herself vulnerable or reveal anything painful. For instance, she evaded questions about children, saying that as one of the older children in her family, there was never shortage of babies to take care of and that her career would require her to be on the road so often that it would not be fair to a child, despite her love for children. The tone of the 1980s for Parton, in terms of how she was perceived by the public and her fans and the entertainment work, can be somewhat attributed to the way it started, with her ﬁrst foray into ﬁlm. Parton had a successful turn in the comedy 9 to 5, starring Lily Tomlin, Dabney Coleman, and Jane Fonda. The plot of the ﬁlm involved three women working in subordinate roles for a boorish, sexist, egomaniacal boss played by Dabney Coleman, and it dabbled with themes of sexual harassment and the need for workplace equality between genders. The song from the ﬁlm hit number one the pop charts—the ﬁrst time for her. “9 to 5” is an irrepressibly catchy, up-tempo pop song with straightforward, sassy lyrics that describe the workaday life as “They just use your mind, and they never give you credit/It’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it.” On the surface it seems like a universal theme, but within the context of the ﬁlm the lyrics impart a subtle feminist critique of the male-dominated workplace. Parton’s performance nabbed her two Golden Globe nominations for Best Motion Picture Actress in a Musical/Comedy and New Star of the Year in a Motion Picture—Female. The song also earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song and a Golden Globe nomination for the same category. After 9 to 5 she appeared in a few more ﬁlms, including starring with Burt Reynolds in Best Little Whorehouse in Texas in 1982, for which she earned yet another Golden Globe nomination. She rerecorded her song “I Will Always Love You” for the ﬁlm, and it hit number one on the country charts again. In 1984 she co-starred with Sylvester Stallone in the comedy Rhinestone, which was not a box ofﬁce success; nor was the ﬁlm Straight Talk. Coupled with the ﬁlm success in the ﬁrst half of the 1980s was a string of pop and country hits, proving that her crossover status was intact. Later, in 1989, she co-starred with Sally Field, Shirley MacLaine, Daryl Hannah, Olympia Dukakis, and Julia Roberts in the sentimental Steel Magnolias. The ﬁlm was set in Natchitoches, Louisiana, and it is centered on the interactions among a half dozen female characters in a hair salon. Critics applauded her performance as one of the standout roles. Things would start to change in the world of country music in the 1980s; it became more glossy, commercialized, produced, and in the emergence of music channels such as MTV, TV-ready. Country became a commodity, with acts such as Kenny Rogers, Alabama, Barbara Mandrell, Willie Nelson, and

I think God meant for me not to have children. My songs are my children, and I’ve given life to three thousand of them.

Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton seeking a wider appeal at the expense, purists argued, of their country roots. Although critics argued the point, Parton seemed to have found a creative middle ground between commercial pop rock and her rustic roots. Heartbreak Express (1982) is country but with enough commercial appeal to crossover to a wider listening audience. By the mid-1980s, though, she was a full-ﬂedged crossover star—it had been years since she had only sung straightforward country music, even though she was still identiﬁed primarily by audiences as a country artist. Her albums and singles continued to do fairly well, though, until 1986, when none of her singles reached the Top 10. After her contract expired that year with RCA, the label decided not to renew it. So in 1987, she signed with Columbia Records. Before her ﬁrst release for her new label, Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt worked together to record the album Trio, which covered country-western territory. The album went platinum and received critical and commercial accolades. The record had versatility, too, with three singles that reached the Top 10 country chart, while the album itself hit its peak at a respectable number six on the pop chart. It was a shrewd move, teaming with two other singing dynamos with their own built-in audiences—Harris, with a country-roots music background, and Ronstadt, who had pioneered country rock but had started to develop a pop cachet. Most important, the singers’ three beautiful voices in concert proved a juggernaut. The album was nearly a decade in the making, ﬁnally having a release date in 1987 that had been anticipated by many. In 1975 the trio had met singing back up on a Neil Young Christmas song called “Light of the Stable” and three years later reconvened to record an album in Los Angeles. But the pressures and concerns created by their individual successes in the late 1970s made it difﬁcult for them to come together, literally and artistically, for an overall worthwhile collaboration. The three distinct voices merged to create a palette of vocal color that may rarely be matched by other artists. Some critics didn’t agree with the result of merging such different vocal styles but the buying public disagreed. Standout tracks include Parton’s “Wildﬂowers,” Ronstadt’s take on “Telling Me Lies,” Jimmie Rodgers’s “Hobo’s Meditation,” and the traditional ballad “Farther Along.” It produced a single, a take on the Phil Spector song “To Know Him Is To Love Him.” It was a strong move for the artists and great for anyone who was a fan of any of the individual singer, yet the added bonus to the genius of their long-awaited collaboration was the awards it won. Trio won a Country Music Award for “Vocal Event of the Year,” and in 1999, their reunion release Trio II also garnered them a nomination in this category. Trio also hit the number one slot in the Billboard Top Country Albums chart. In 1986, Parton experienced a dramatic weight loss, which has been well documented. The activities of the decade—her albums, her ﬁlm roles—were earning her respect but also a lot of examination and judgment of her as a

325

326

Women Icons of Popular Music

role model. Ms. magazine ran a series of articles during these years, seeking to understand Parton’s motivation and get her to confess to being a feminist, which she has categorically denied despite all that her egalitarian-minded activities indicate. Nevertheless, Parton has a consistent fan base across a range of demographics, whether it’s the heartland of America, curious feminists, or those in the gay and lesbian community and drag queens. Her persona’s appeal knows no boundaries. Finding Another Voice, Another Audience, 1990–2007 Despite her success with ﬁlms and singing, Parton still identiﬁed herself as primarily a songwriter over any of her other endeavors. By 1990, her businesses were ﬁrmly in place. She had tried and failed twice at a television variety show and had a few silly but successful ﬁlm comedies behind her. In her attempts to become a bona ﬁde star in many areas, she had of course succeeded wildly with crossing over music, but her country credibility, according to some critics, was starting to wane by the early 1990s. She had a brief foray back to her roots music in this decade. In 1991, she released Eagle When She Flies, which, with its full country material, earned her a platinum record. The anthemic ode to female empowerment in the title track went to number one on the Top Country Albums chart and twenty-four on the Billboard 200 and proved she could still hold her own after more than twenty-ﬁve years of recording music. But before her next album was released, Parton inadvertently got a huge boost when Whitney Houston recorded her song “I Will Always Love You,” blowing the subtlety out of the Parton rendition and amping it into an overdramatic, melismatic anthem. The song appeared on the soundtrack to the 1992 ﬁlm The Bodyguard, and Houston’s version catapulted sales to over 12 million copies. Parton, though, owned the song, so she probably did not mind its use. It has subsequently been covered by Kenny Rogers and Leann Rimes. In the meantime, 1993’s Slow Dancing With the Moon received mixed reviews even though it charted well, peaking at number four on the country chart and sixteen on the Billboard 200. Rolling Stone noted that Parton’s return to the world of Nashville somewhat negatively impacted the production of Slow Dancing, as the state of country music in Nashville in early 1990s meant a much more savvy, marketed product with a lot more gloss on it than in previous years. The record boasts an abundance of top-notch guest artists, but it suffers somewhat on some of the glossier numbers that are dominated by guests. Some critics believed that the more spare songs are the best. However, with Ricky Skaggs, Kathy Mattea, Billy Ray Cyrus, Vince Gill, Emmylou Harris, and Alison Krauss lending their talents, Parton seems to have caught anyone important in country-bluegrass-folk genre—hybrids or purists—on this record.

Dolly Parton

In 1994, Parton released the live acoustic album Heartsongs: Live from Home, a twenty-three-track collection of traditional acoustic songs that she grew up hearing from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, and the Smoky Mountains. Bruce Weber of All Music Guide described it as “a smorgasbord of her country hits, the stories behind them, some new songs, and a rather large amount of classic old-timey standards,” praising her new version of “Smokey Mountain Memories” and the way in which “Wayfaring Stranger” showed off Parton’s gospel abilities. It was the ﬁrst record put out on her own label, Blue Eye, with distribution by Sony. Toward the end of the 1990s, Parton released an autobiography called Dolly: My Life and Other Unﬁnished Business, which offered up plenty of folksy tales of her hardscrabble youth, her personal problems, and her mysterious relationship with her reclusive husband. One reviewer for Entertainment Weekly, however, was disappointed in what Parton did divulge and what those revelations showed about her so-called feminism. Parton said that she tries not to argue with her husband and even goes so far as to apologize for things regardless of whether or not she feels she is to blame. The book was short on details and reﬂections of her music and musical developments of her career and heavy on dieting, personal anecdotes, and spirituality. Parton was candid in her book about the changes in country music during the 1990s; it is ironic that the woman who helped pave the way for the commercialization of country would then, during this decade, have some trouble getting consistent radio play. In 1996 she closed her Nashville ofﬁce, and in 1997 disbanded her fan club. Parton, along with the likes of Merle Haggard, George Jones, and Johnny Cash, were being shut out of country radio in favor of the more modern country sound permeating the airwaves. It made sense, then, that Parton went completely back to her roots with subsequent albums. In 1999, she began recording her own albums on Blue Eye and leasing the masters to the independent label Sugar Hill for distribution. She reunited with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt for Trio II, which was also released that year and received less praise than their ﬁrst collaboration. The process of recording and promotion was also rumored to be fraught with fractious arguments and bickering. But her 1999 release The Grass Is Blue marked a return to the Appalachian Mountains with production from Steve Buckingham, who helped round up the singers such as Alison Krauss, Rhonda Vincent, Stuart Duncan, and Patty Loveless, among others. It also marked the beginning of her bluegrass-based recordings that would follow. In early 2001, Parton released an album called Little Sparrow, which was lauded as her return to pure mountain music. It’s not terribly surprising that Parton would decide to return to the music of her native Appalachia, where ghost stories were the norm. Little Sparrow has its haunting moments with “Down from Dover” and “Mountain Angel.” The title track ﬁnds its roots in Celtic music. Elsewhere, Parton even takes on some unlikely choices and spins them through her web, with a spirited rendition of the Eagles’s “Seven Bridges

327

328

Women Icons of Popular Music

Road” and a gospel-sounding rendition of Collective Soul’s alternative rock hit “Shine.” Her version of that song garnered her a Grammy Award for “Best Country Song.” These unlikely covers, though, were not the ﬁrst time Parton had chosen material that others were surprised by. Like many artists, Parton was moved and upset by the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, and her album Halos and Horns, released in summer 2002, charts some of the emotional terrain in her life since that event. It was her fourth release to use the instruments most commonly found in bluegrass music—banjo, ﬁddle, and mandolin. The album is noteworthy for several reasons. Parton decided to use relatively unknown musicians, some of whom worked at her theme park, rather than go with the same group of seasoned session musicians. The decision created a less smooth sound that is necessary to give the songs honesty. Half of the songs are sad mountain songs; some of them are compositions written after 9/11, such as “Raven Dove,” which seeks a peaceful, just world, and “Hello God,” in which she beseeches God to intervene in a world where “we ﬁght and kill each other in your name, defending you.” Continuing the trend she established with her previous record, the album features a gospel-tinged reworking of the classic rock Led Zeppelin song “Stairway to Heaven” and a take on the moody Bread ballad “If” that imparts a sense of optimism just by her speeding it up and adding banjo. Halos and Horns, like its predecessor, is the work of a conﬁdent, mature artist who is in full command of her skills as a singer, interpreter, and songwriter. Parton’s persona, to the general public, seems to be centered on her largerthan-life attributes and her showy, glamorous outﬁts; her television or ﬁlm appearances; or Dollywood. But many people do not know about her tremendous songwriting abilities. Those who work in the business do indeed know her talent, though. As a testament to her legacy, in 2003 a group of musicians recorded a tribute album to Parton called Just Because I’m a Woman, named in honor of her classic 1968 hit, with performances from a wide range of female musicians. The bluegrass artist and singer Alison Krauss recorded a loose, slower version of “9 to 5” and Melissa Etheridge lent her voice to “I Will Always Love You,” while Shania Twain covered “Coat of Many Colors” and Norah Jones took on “The Grass is Blue.” In 2005, Parton sang backing vocals on the song “When I Get Where I’m Going” by rising Nashville star Brad Paisley from his album Time Well Wasted, with the tagline “featuring Dolly Parton.” The pair was awarded with a CMA for Musical Event of the Year. In fall 2007, Parton launched her ﬁrst ofﬁcial music Web site, DollyPartonMusic.net, with news of her upcoming tour and impending new studio album. In February 2008, Parton released her ﬁrst album of straightforward, mainstream country songs in seventeen years called Backwoods Barbie. The ﬁrst single, “Better Get to Livin’,” is a personal anthem of sorts that details Parton’s realistic but optimistic approach to life. Sales were not particularly healthy so Parton embraced the new digital age and created her own independent

Dolly Parton

label, Dolly Records. She said in a press release, “[T]he way music is being played today, why not make all the money, if there’s any money to be made. I’d rather have all of something than some of nothing” (Mitch Schneider Organization 2007). Parton is one of many big stars who now eschew the major label system—she joined the ranks of Prince, Madonna, and the progressive rock band Radiohead for pioneering new ways of reaching fans.

MISSION, MOTIVATION, PROCESS Parton’s attention to her appearance—through plastic surgeries (reputed or real), elaborate blonde hairpieces, and shiny, form-ﬁtting clothing—is part of her signature look. Some might say, however, that as much as she is a role model for what she has achieved through hard work, talent, and determination, her good looks and willingness to play into cultural ideals of femininity complicates her image, and perhaps not in a favorable way. It is ironic, then, that her ﬁrst song to call the attention of Porter Wagoner was “Dumb Blonde,” but Parton has gained the trust and respect of her peers and audience as someone who is genuine, warm, smart, with wholesome rural values. Parton embodies all of this with a sense of playfulness and has the last laugh, because she acknowledges the artiﬁce involved in her persona. The garish costumes that accentuate her ﬁgure are one thing, but her music and lyrics convey something else. Parton’s songs take on life, love, tragedy, God, spirituality, womanhood, nature, and other preoccupations. Further complicating her image is the fact that she has become an extremely successful entrepreneur and businesswoman who has used her likeness to start another empire related to but not dependent on her own performances; theme parks and a stampede. In short, Parton is not simply an image—there seems to be something real that her audiences connect with—and that is likely a result of the way she has balanced her rural, traditional roots and her career as a savvy entertainer and businesswoman. In an interview with The Star, a newspaper tabloid, Parton talked about what it has been like being a woman in country music and the choices she has made. She said in the early days she looked more plain. “I soon realized I had to play by men’s rules to win. My way of ﬁghting back was to wear the frilly clothes and put on the big, blonde, wigs. It helped that I had a small voice that enabled me to sing songs of pain and loneliness and love and gentle things like butterﬂies and children. I found that both men and women liked me” (Tichi 1998, 101). Those men’s rules, however, somewhat account for a woman who seems cartoonish and who somehow expertly ﬁnger picks a guitar with long, lacquered nails and giggles like a schoolgirl. Parton’s voice is unmistakable, but she has never had singing lessons. With Parton, what you see it truly what you get; even with the artiﬁce, an essence of her comes through. The level of her musicianship in tandem with her extreme image suggests that Parton has thought through every aspect of her career.

329

330

Women Icons of Popular Music

Parton has written many memorable songs, but she credited “Coat of Many Colors” as her favorite. The story behind the song seems to really encapsulate what Parton is all about—her plucky spirit, her sense of ﬁnding good in a bad situation and looking on the bright side, and triumphing over adversity. Wearing the coat all day showed that others could not break her spirit, and that indomitable nature pervades much of her songwriting. Ultimately, she saw the experience as a blessing that inspired her to write the song many years later. She said in her autobiography that “ ‘Coat of Many Colors’ is still my favorite song that I ever wrote or sang. It was also a big hit, and that did a lot to help me forget that early pain. It’s amazing how healing money can be” (Parton 1994, 39). When the song was a hit, Parton said she wanted to buy her mother a mink coat, but her mother protested, saying she did not have anywhere to wear it. Instead, she gave her mother the money. The song even inspired a children’s book of the same name, which was published in 1996. From early in her career, though, her honesty and strong independent streak rufﬂed feathers in Nashville because she dared to write songs that spoke to universal truths about men and women. Parton would speak her mind. A classic example is her song “Just Because I’m a Woman,” which she wrote in 1968 and which became a hit in country music. It paved the way for the likes of Faith Hill, Shania Twain, Leann Rimes, and other sassy and strong country-pop women. The ballad’s knowing lyrics and Parton’s impassioned, crystalline delivery show a lineage and a debt to both Patsy Cline and Hank Williams. If the persona that comes through were not so strong, it could be mistaken for a cry-in-your-beer classic country tune. The refrain of this memorable tune sets the record straight, saying that even when women err, their foibles are no more stupid or vulnerable or ill-advised than those of men: “No, my mistakes are no worse than yours/Just because I’m a woman.” It has been reported that the song came as a result of her husband’s surprise that he was not her ﬁrst sexual partner. Her reaction was channeled into this feminist song. Throughout her career, Parton has written thousands of songs and released dozens of records, and her crossover success is signiﬁcant. Writing in Ms. magazine, Gloria Steinem pointed out that Parton crossed over “the music world’s class line without losing her original audience” and that she accomplished this feat “with irresistible country melodies and with lyrics that celebrated a real life” (Steinem 1987). Some of them are stronger and sassier than others, but all impart a certain sensibility about womanhood. For example, “Eagle When She Flies” represents a certain kind of feminism, one that trumps the strong but vulnerable, capable but overworked woman within the genre of country music. Written in 1991, Parton sings in third person—the song is an ode to the many difﬁcult roles that women juggle simultaneously and their ability to survive through whatever life throws at them. The refrain ﬁnds her singing, “And she’s a sparrow when she’s broken/But she’s an eagle when she ﬂies.” When performing on the Tonight Show she introduced the song as one

Dolly Parton

331

for women and for mothers and “all the great women who’ve helped make this world more wonderful. I If feminism means each of us hope maybe you guys will appreciate this, too” (Tichi finding our own unique power, and helping other women to 1998, 114–115). Her businesses attempt to preserve the Appalachian do the same, Dolly Parton has culture of singing and storytelling—a culture that also certainly done both. values strong ties among women (Tichi 108). In other —Gloria Steinem words, Parton comes from a Southern Appalachian mountain culture that values women and one that strives to subvert the paradigm by ﬁghting within its structures and exploiting it for personal gain. Certainly the fact that she has remained close to her childhood friend Judy Ogle throughout her life is a testament to her values; Ogle has long served as a personal assistant and tours with her. Among those important values are her sense of faith, Christianity, and spirituality. She has often been asked by both reporters and family members if she could imagine dedicating her life to God’s work. In her autobiography, she said, humorously, “[W]ell, God and I have a great relationship, but we both see other people. I truly believe that God is in everything I do and that all of my work gloriﬁes him. I don’t think you have to be a religious fanatic to do God’s work” (Parton 1994, 314). In Alanna Nash’s 1978 biography, Parton was less ﬂip and somewhat contradictory, saying that she could not consider herself a Christian because she is always honest with God; if anything, she said, she is a sinner. Similarly, she dodged pigeonholing when it came to questions of whether she was a feminist and what her political beliefs were. She told Ms. in 1986, “I’m not a political person, but I write a lot of message music, a lot of message songs and I do believe in the time to come that I can be very helpful” (McHenry 1986).

LEGACY AND OTHER INTERESTS Parton has earned the nickname “iron butterﬂy” because of her business acumen and her extreme femininity. In interviews, she has often said that she looks like a woman but thinks like a man. Beyond music, Parton has helped ensure the vitality of her community and Southern culture through business endeavors. In 1986 Parton opened Dollywood, a theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, on the outskirts of the Smoky Mountains with a museum, a restaurant serving her recipes, a music shop and recording studio called “The Two Doors Down Music Emporium,” and a back-porch theater whose stage is a replica of her childhood home. As a commitment to her brand and to giving back to her community, the theme park has provided hundreds of jobs to an economically depressed region. A year after Dollywood opened, in 1987, Parton opened a series of Grand Ole Opry–styled venues called Dixie Stampede, which offers dinner and performance for 1000 people at a time. The ﬁrst location is just outside

332

Women Icons of Popular Music

Dollywood in Pigeon Forge; subsequent locations have opened in Branson, Missouri, and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The shows feature a variety of Southern-style entertainment ranging from horse stampedes to stunt riders and a fair degree of audience participation. As an outgrowth of Dollywood, she started the —critic Stephanie Zacharek Dollywood Foundation in 1988, which awards scholarships to high school students in the region and supports other initiatives that promote educating children. Parton has also been involved in philanthropic efforts, too, with a particular interest in literacy because she has always loved to read. Through her foundation, she established Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library in 1996, a program that started in Sevier County, Tennessee—her homeland—but has been replicated in over 700 counties across the United States and Canada. The program has distributed more than 7 million books to date and its goal is for each child to receive one book per month from the time he or she is born until the age of ﬁve. The ﬁrst book every child receives through the program is The Little Engine that Could. Parton also published a cookbook called Dolly’s Dixie Fixins Cookbook, with more than 125 recipes, some of which are culled from family history passed down from her mother. The cookbook’s sales beneﬁt the Imagination Library foundation. Parton has also given her time, money, and efforts toward the Make-a-Wish Foundation and AIDS awareness. Parton is ambitious and versatile, and she has either talked about or tried to do everything from sell cosmetics and cookbooks to wigs and frozen food and lingerie. There have been rumors and talks about a Dolly Parton musical celebrating her trials and tribulations, and she is currently at work adapting the ﬁlm 9 to 5 for Broadway audiences, set for a 2009 debut. For a time she ran a wig company simply called Dolly Parton Wigs and also had a cosmetic line for Revlon in 1993 called Dolly Parton’s Beauty Conﬁdence Collection, which was unsuccessful and short-lived. Parton and longtime manager Sandy Gallin started Sandollar Productions around 1986, which produced the Fox network television shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the spinoff series Angel, in addition to the homespun holiday television movie, Smoky Mountain Christmas. The production company also produced the ﬁlms Father of the Bride, Father of the Bride II, and Gross Anatomy, among others. She also owns another company called Southern Light Production Company and owns the copyrights for her original compositions through her own publishing company Velvet Apple, which she started in 1976; she does not own copyrights for the material written during the Monument years of 1965 to 1967. Parton oversees her business endeavors through Dolly Parton Enterprises, which she formed in the mid-1980s and is described by the Library of Congress as a “$100 million media empire” (Library of Congress Web site).

Her voice has so much shimmering life to it, as well as a kind of voluptuousness—it’s the voice of someone who’s eager to take everything in.

Dolly Parton

Because she worked hard to establish her image, she must work equally hard to maintain its perceived ﬂawlessness. Parton is also famous for her many plastic surgeries, particularly in the area of breast augmentation; her ﬁrst admittance to plastic surgery appeared in 2002 Irish newspaper. The surgeries have left her looking nearly ageless, with her perfect skin and china-doll features intact. Parton is honest and self-effacing and retains a sense of humor about her efforts, saying that she has had procedures periodically. Some might remember her for her image and not her songwriting skills, which is unfortunate. But Parton maintains that she writes every day, and that the process is as natural and easy as her daily habits.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Dolly Parton Sings. RCA Victor, 1963 Hello, I’m Dolly. Monument, 1967 Just Because I’m A Woman. RCA, 1968 Coat of Many Colors. Buddha, 1971 My Tennessee Mountain Home. RCA, 1973 Jolene. Buddha, 1974 Greatest Hits. MCA, 1982 Eagle When She Flies. Columbia, 1991 Slow Dancing With the Moon. Columbia, 1993 The Grass is Blue. Sugar Hill, 1999 Little Sparrow. Sugar Hill, 2001 Backwoods Barbie. Dolly Records, 2008

FURTHER READING Bufwack, Mary A., and Robert K. Oermann. Finding Her Voice: Women in Country Music 1800–2000. Nashville, TN: Country Music Foundation Press/Vanderbilt University, 2003. Chadbourne, Eugene. “Here You Come Again. Review.” All Music Guide. Available online at wm06.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=ADFEAEE47817D849 AA7E20C79A3E52DBB57DF702FE5AFB86112F0456D3B82D4BBD0E4FE0 6BC2AB81B0FA6AB57FB0FD2EA45D43D2CAE456FBD667382DFC93&sql= 10:hjfoxqw5ld0e. Deming, Mark. “Just Because I’m a Woman. Review.” All Music Guide. Available online at www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:ajfoxqw5ld0e. Flippo, Chet. “Dolly Parton: Tennessee Mountain Home.” Rolling Stone 198 (October 23, 1975): 24. Flippo, Chet. “Dolly Parton.” Rolling Stone 246 (August 25, 1977): 32–38. Friskics-Warren, Bill. “The Other Dolly Parton, the Songwriting One.” New York Times (July 21, 2002).

333

334

Women Icons of Popular Music

Gates, David. “The Trio. Review.” Rolling Stone 499 (May 7, 1987). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/dollyparton/albums/album/127239/review/5944922/ the_trio. Haller, Scot. “The Lady or the Tiger? Dolly Parton.” People Weekly (July 9, 1984). Heathcote, Elizabeth. “Q: The Interview: Dolly Parton.” Independent on Sunday London, England. (June 30, 2002). Heaton, Dave. “Growing Up Hurts: Dolly Parton’s Albums of ‘Independence.’ ” Pop Matters (May 17, 2007). Available online at www.popmatters.com/pm/features/ article/33740/growing-up-hurts-dolly-partons. Holden, Stephen. “Artistic Stagnation Besets Country Music.” New York Times (May 9, 1982). Jerome, Jim. “Here She Comes Again: Dolly Parton Looks Back on 40 Years of Hard Times, Hit Songs and Plenty of Hairspray.” People Weekly (November 10, 2003). Library of Congress. Ofﬁcial Web site. “Biography of Dolly Parton.” Available online at www.loc.gov/about/awards/legends/bio/parton.html. McHenry, Susan. “Positively Parton.” Ms. (July 1986). Mifﬂin, Margot. “Shallow Dolly: Parton’s New Memoir is a Little Less Than Revealing.” Entertainment Weekly (September 30, 1994). Available online at www.ew .com/ew/article/0,,303886,00.html. Mitch Schneider Organization. “Dolly Parton Q&A on Her New Single ‘Better Get to Livin’ and CD Backwoods Barbie.” Press release (September 5, 2007). Available online at www.msopr.com/?q=node/3339. Nash, Alanna. Dolly. Los Angeles, CA: Reed Books, 1978. Parton, Dolly. Dolly: My Life & Other Unﬁnished Business. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. Puterbaugh, Parke. “Little Sparrow. Review.” Rolling Stone 864 (February 20, 2001). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/dollyparton/albums/album/ 217035/ review/6067888/little_sparrow. Rockwell, John. “Three of Pop’s Best Go Romping in the Country.” New York Times (March 1, 1987). Steinem, Gloria. “Dolly Parton.” Ms. (January 1987). Tichi, Cecelia (ed.). Reading Country Music: Steel Guitars, Opry Stars and HonkyTonk Bars. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998. Weber, Barry. “Heartsongs: Live From Home. Review.” All Music Guide. Available online at wm11.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:aifrxqthldde. Zacharek, Stephanie. “Dolly Parton: Brilliant Careers.” Salon.com (October 31, 2000). Available online at archive.salon.com/people/bc/2000/10/31/parton/index.html? source=search&aim=/people/bc.

© Tom Maday/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

Liz Phair

336

Women Icons of Popular Music

OVERVIEW

What I’m really chasing is the essential pop song—the effortless classic, like good Stones and Beatles tunes that are enriched rather than diminished with age. If I accomplish anything more noble, it’s usually inadvertent.

Liz Phair is perhaps most known to longtime fans as the outspoken feminist songwriter whose 1993 debut album Exile in Guyville was imagined as a song-bysong response to the Rolling Stones album Exile on Main Street. The tongue-in-cheek title, the low, plaintive rumble of her voice (at least in the early part of her career), and sexually frank lyrics made her a mild sensation in the independent and college music scenes. Her fan base grew organically from there, spreading through word-of-mouth. Phair became an indie rock poster child, and many college girls and their boyfriends had no problems agreeing on the appeal of her music. Many critics contended that after such strong songs like the attentiongrabbing, sassy “6’1” and the heart-wrenching “Divorce Song” on her debut album, Phair’s subsequent albums never lived up to the perfection of her debut on Matador Records. Phair released two more albums in relatively quick succession to her debut and then divorced her husband, ﬁlm editor Jim Staskausas. A considerable amount of time lagged between her third album, Whitechocolatespaceegg, and her follow up, 2001’s Liz Phair. The eponymously named album was largely notable because it strongly veered in a direction that many fans and critics thought was antithetical to Phair’s style. Commercial and overtly pop, Liz Phair had the help of the production/ songwriting trio known as the Matrix—Lauren Christy, Graham Edwards, and Scott Spock—who had been responsible for creating massive hit pop songs for the diverse likes of Avril Lavigne, Korn, Hilary Duff, Shakira, and Jason Mraz. Fiercely independent and tough minded, Phair approached songwriting in an academic way, and she has told interviewers that she even thought about going to graduate school when she was in college. Her songwriting is marked by intelligence, wit, and a fair amount of self-respect. Her later albums, the self-titled release and Somebody’s Miracle (2005), show a sense of optimism, fun, and playfulness that her earlier records mostly lacked. Fans have been somewhat confused by this, perhaps holding Phair to the unrealistic standard that an artist should not change throughout her career, but their opinion has not seemed to bother her. In fact, at times, in magazine interviews, she’s suggested her resolve has strengthened. In just a handful of albums—a modest ﬁve over the course of twelve years— Phair has managed both to reinvent herself and somehow remain true to herself. Even the most populist-minded moves, she insisted, were not calculated and cold. But still, she remains an iconic—and ironic—ﬁgure, because she historically has been an image of independence who, it seems, all of a sudden decided she wanted to be loved and listened to by a larger audience than she

Liz Phair

337

had previously reached. When she tried to achieve that goal, she received a lot of attention but not I hope I can help widen the road enough so high school necessarily commensurate record sales. Commercially speaking, her move to a more pop- girls can get up on stage oriented sound was a wash when one considers album without feeling intimidated, positions. Notably, her debut peaked at number 12 like they have to live up to on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart and barely cracked “guy rock.” the Billboard 200, peaking at 196. Whip-Smart landed at a respectable number twenty-seven but her 2003 commercially reaching album Liz Phair also reached twenty-seven on that chart as well as twenty-seven on the Top Internet Albums. Whitechocolatespaceegg though, showed only marginal decline from WhipSmart, reaching thirty-ﬁve in 1998. Somebody’s Miracle, her follow-up to Liz Phair, hit the shelves in 2005 and peaked at forty-six on the Billboard 200. The single “Why Can’t I?” from her Liz Phair album, though, found itself on seven different Billboard singles charts, from Adult Top 40 to Top 40 Mainstream to number one on the Top 40 Adult Recurrents, positions that seem to indicate her work could pervade several demographic groups. The follow-up single “Extraordinary” from that same album peaked at fourteen on the Adult Top 40. Despite the ﬂurry of radio play and activity, stellar album sales did not follow. The single “Why Can’t I?” achieved gold status as a download by itself, but her only other gold albums were Exile in Guyville, certiﬁed in May 1998, and Whip-Smart, which was certiﬁed in March 1998. Phair was nominated for a Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance for “Supernova,” the year that “Come to My Window” by Melissa Etheridge won (1995); she had another nomination in 1996 for “Don’t Have Time,” the year the angry, outrageous hit song “You Oughta Know” by Alanis Morissette won. Phair is in some ways at a crossroads at this point in her career, and it would not be a surprise if Capitol Records released her from further recording obligations. As the epitome of independent thinking in contemporary music, Phair announced in spring 2008 that ATO Records, an independent label started by musician Dave Matthews, would release a special ﬁfteen-year anniversary reissue of her album Exile in Guyville and an album of all-new material later in the year. The move seems like a return to her roots. Despite what many critics describe as an unremarkable voice—her low alto has been described as deadpan, ﬂat, plain, and monotone—and, in the early years, a consistently bad case of stage fright, Phair’s fans are legion. Her inﬂuence cannot be underestimated; it reaches into the nether worlds of the independent music scene from which she emerged and into the vast, far more homogenized world of popular music. Even though Phair never broke through commercially—her appeal was initially limited but musically palpable—she paved the way for the next generation of artists. Without Liz Phair, the late 1990s would not have seen the male-bashing, overly staunch, and attitude-laden rock of Alanis Morissette, or the Morissette-inspired knock-off songwriter

338

Women Icons of Popular Music

Meredith Brooks, who proclaimed in her one-hit wonder “I’m a Bitch.” Phair is probably one of very few female pop stars capable of articulating something intelligent and thought provoking while dressing somewhat provocatively. Exhibiting that kind of complex, ironic persona has consistently earned Phair attention, confusion, and admiration.

EARLY YEARS Phair grew up in Winnetka, an afﬂuent Chicago suburb. Her parents, Dr. John Phair, an AIDS researcher who worked as chief of infectious diseases at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Illinois, and Nancy Phair, an art historian with ties to the Art Institute of Chicago, adopted her at birth. Phair has told interviewers that she has at times felt like a misﬁt because she was adopted, even as the feeling has helped her creatively. She said her mother chose her daughter’s name because she thought it would look good as a writer’s byline in The New Yorker. Her parents exposed her to art and culture from a young age. Consequently, Phair grew up thinking she wanted to be an artist, not a musician, and cited painting and charcoal drawings as her ﬁrst love. She always got along with her parents and grew up comfortably, looking like a regular, middle-class kid. Phair claimed her articulateness and her attention to language came from her parents; her mother prohibited swearing, but her father indulged in it easily. Something happened, as it often does, during Phair’s young adult years: adolescent-onset rebellion. Her older brother Phillip (who was also adopted) had trouble with alcohol and drugs when she was a teenager. Home life was stressful because of her brother, but she also acknowledged that being adopted played into her rebellion as well, in terms of her identity struggle. Early in her life, she felt as though she had always been the “good girl,” but at the end of high school that changed. Even though she was slated for Ivy League college life she started skipping class and generally rebelling. However, Phair did not abandon her studies entirely, and she was accepted to Oberlin College in Ohio where she studied art. At ﬁrst she wanted to become an artist. When a female art professor assigned a book about modern art, Phair counted up only thirty female artists in a book of 1200 pages. “I just freaked out. I walked around telling everyone. . . . It was really frightening to me. That’s what I wanted immortality for—to get my name in the history books and to make sure I could pursue my interests” (Pareles 1994). While she was in college, she worked as an intern in New York for politically inclined artists such as Nancy Spero and Leon Golub. She also became interested in the independent rock scene, and in time befriended guitarist Chris Brokaw, who would later join the band Come. After graduation the pair moved to San Francisco, and Phair tried to make it as an artist. Neither of them followed through with their plans.

Liz Phair

Eventually though she moved back to Chicago and continued to try to succeed as an artist by selling her People hang their hopes on charcoal drawings. She was staunchly dedicated to you fitting into their CD selling her art and was determined to making a living collection in way that they as an artist, even if it meant living with friends to save have made a space for, but money and forgoing necessities. She was especially I’m playing a longer game determined to succeed because many people told her than that. she could not do it. But also around this time, Phair started writing songs, even as she started to support herself by selling her charcoal drawings on the streets of Wicker Park. Some of these songwriting forays turned into her early demos—which were really just tapes she had made in her bedroom on a four-track device—called Girlysound. Around this time, Phair was becoming entrenched in the Chicago independent music scene, which spawned groups such as Tortoise, Sea and Cake, Urge Overkill, and the careers of musicians such as drummer Brad Wood and indie label honcho John Henderson, who ran Feel Good All Over. Phair said she started writing songs on a dare and to participate in the scene, which was mostly male dominated, without seeming like a wannabe. The scene got the nickname Guyville; the band Urge Overkill named a song “Goodbye to Guyville” on their 1992 EP Stull. Phair’s demo tapes got into the hands of two people in the scene. Once that happened, they were quickly copied and redistributed among a complex grassroots network. It’s nearly impossible to ﬁnd them commercially, but there are some ﬂoating around the Internet. Among fans the tapes are revered. Phair herself has even acknowledged that you can see the beginnings of her style on these rough, rudimentary recordings. At ﬁrst, when drummer Brad Wood heard some of those early songs, they took him by surprise. “A lot of the four-track stuff is an extremely frank assessment of men and relationships. I had never heard anyone say those words, let alone sing them,” he told the New York Times (Pareles 1994). Henderson and Phair attempted to record parts of Girlysound again with Wood, but the two parted ways after a disagreement and Wood became her chief collaborator. (He would ultimately play drums on several of her albums and serve as producer and co-producer.) But it was her friend Brokaw who would help broker a deal for her, passing along her Girlysound tapes to Gerald Cosley, the head of Matador Records, to which Brokaw’s band Come was signed. By summer 1992, Matador had signed Phair. She started writing and then recording her album soon thereafter.

CAREER PATH Phair’s ﬁrst album, Exile in Guyville, received strong reviews when it was released in June 1993, particularly among college and independent music scenes. Many publications mentioned her claim that the double album, with eighteen

339

340

Women Icons of Popular Music

tracks, was organized as a response, from the point of view of a lover, to the classic Rolling Stones album Exile on Main Street. Such nervy proclamations were bound to get an artist attention, and that display of savvy, along with the album’s blatant sexual content, led to comparisons to Madonna. Over the course of a year though, the album built up momentum, leading The Village Voice and Spin to include it on their Best of the Year critics’ polls. In fact, the The Village Voice named her Artist of the Year in 1993, making her the ﬁrst woman to receive the honor since Joni Mitchell in 1974. Many people in the indie rock world, though, loved it simply for its unbridled honesty and its preoccupation with love, sex, and male-female relationships. Its low-ﬁ production, too, kept her indie credibility intact. According to her label, Matador Records, by late September 1993, just three months after its release, Exile in Guyville had sold 20,000 copies—a remarkable number for an independent release by a little-known artist. The sound of the album, too, was built to mimic the Rolling Stones album of its inspiration, which was recorded in the basement of a French villa. Producer and drummer Brad Wood recorded and engineered it in his Idful Studio in Wicker Park, Illinois, in a deliberately low-ﬁ manner, which is different from the low-tech label it is sometimes given. Phair had analyzed every track on the Stones’s album but Wood’s concern was to create an album that sounded as important twenty years from its release as it did at its inception. The sprawling, ambitious nature of Guyville allowed Phair to showcase the complex nature of its content, exhibiting desire, regret, humor—sometimes simultaneously—on the song’s eighteen tracks. Her otherwise unremarkable alto is at turns no-nonsense, deﬁant, provocative, and tinged with regret. And although Phair does not respond to the Stones’s album in a consistently direct manner, the conceit made for a great headline and a lot of attention. On the album’s ﬁrst track, however, she directly tackles the Jagger persona in “Rocks Off,” stating in her song’s ﬁrst line “I bet you fall in bed too easily with the beautiful girls who are shyly brave/You sell yourself as a man to save.” From the very ﬁrst line of the very ﬁrst song of her very ﬁrst album, Phair establishes a strong female point of view. In the third song, “Dance of the Seven Veils,” she employs an ordinarily derogatory term for female anatomy in an ironic attempt at empowerment, reclaiming it in an offhand manner. She goes on, taking stabs at a self-important, good-looking man in “Soap Star Joe” and examining gender politics in “Canary.” She arrives, slightly more than halfway through the album, at song ten, “Fuck and Run.” As Phair plays a low, rumbling guitar, she laments, as the narrator, her habit of engaging in one night stands. This attention-grabbing song is a straightforward expression, packed with sly criticism of both herself and common male-female gender

I think I learned a really valuable lesson while I was making this album: that the more detail and specificity I can bring to my songs from [my] own life, the more it resonates with other people.

Liz Phair

dynamics, but with a twist: She wants a sexual partner, but she also wants a boyfriend, and sometimes these two desires conﬂict. Before the album’s end, she hits more touching, wrenching territory in “Divorce Song” and “Flower,” a song about intercourse that begins “Every time I see your face I think of things unpure, unchaste” and develops into what is probably one of the more vivid, descriptive recitations of a fantasy set to music. For all its sexual content and references to handguns, including the warbly guitar in “Gunshy” toward the end of the album, Phair shows listeners that she is complex and smart. At times, she adopts an almost literary approach to songwriting, evoking references to major writers such as Shakespeare. Guyville also offers repeated evidence that Phair really knows her way around a rhyming couplet and how to write a song that plays out like a short story, such as “Stratford-on-Guy,” a reference to Shakespeare’s home, Stratford-on-Avon. Sometimes that complexity is lost, however, and leads to misconceptions. Phair’s photo-booth album cover photograph revealed the smallest amount of her breast, and the inside art featured a woman in various stages of undress. “I want to present a woman whose sexuality is intact, who’s not struggling with it, but I don’t think everyone’s getting the message,” she told the StarTribune (Tillotson 1994). Critics of differing opinions were equally outspoken with their thoughts about her debut. Producer and musician Steve Albini, also of the Chicago scene, launched an attack on her based on the heavy media attention Guyville received. Some critics were taken with—and at times, taken aback by—her forthright manner and the intimate nature of her songwriting. Whatever they might object to about her song style, they all acknowledged that she was serious about her music. Some critics remarked on her scant guitar playing ability, but admitted that the energy of her music made her lack of skill beside the point. Nevertheless, the album had sold over 200,000 copies by spring 1994, which is no small feat for an independent release. From the moment of its release Phair had to battle scrutiny, labeling, and categorization from journalists and critics. In late September 1993, for instance, as her music was starting to gain her signiﬁcant media attention, she got a bit defensive with a reporter, asserting her talent and stressing that she was going to be around for a long time. “People should chill out and watch it happen instead of freaking all over it now like this was my retrospective. It’s a ﬁrst album. Can I say that again? It’s a ﬁrst album” (DeRogatis 1993). Whip-Smart, her follow up, was commercially successful—it charted well for a sophomore album, but some critics viewed it as a disappointing effort. Initially, the album bore the title Gender Mountain. With fourteen tracks, it was certainly not as sprawling as her debut, but having been produced with Brad Wood, the album retained much of the same sound. Still, there were some differences and some compelling signs of growth and experimentation. The songs were more complex and discussed topics beyond the ideas of “love”

341

342

Women Icons of Popular Music

and “not love” or even the interaction of male and female accepted roles that ﬁlled the ﬁrst album. Phair’s approach this time around was unintentional. She likened the process to writing down one’s dreams and thinking they are about one thing but then, on rereading what is written, seeing that there are completely different connections than had been considered. Indeed, the album’s ﬁrst song “Chopsticks,” with its simple, far-off piano, sets the female narrator in the —Jim DeRogatis and Kevin role of detached user. It tells the story of a one night Michael Williams stand from the perspective of a woman; a point of view that had not often been articulated in rock music. As if there were any questions about what happened to the frank songwriter Phair, she follows such a somber lead-off track with the blast of “Supernova.” Written for then-boyfriend Jim Staskausas, the song is a joyful expression of his sexual prowess and says, expressing crassness followed up by sentimentality: “You fuck like a volcano/And you’re everything to me.” As if that were too much of an admission, she vacillates and follows that song with “Support System,” in which she declares her lack of need for one, in an admittance of self-protection. “Supernova” was released as the album’s single. It reached number six on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and slipped into the Billboard Hot 100 at number seventy-eight. In addition to the same thematic territory Phair developed on Guyville, Whip-Smart felt moodier, less overtly concerned with writing sexually frank material—perhaps a sign of her growing conﬁdence. In the middle of the album, two songs in particular depart somewhat from that explicitness. Bluesy “Shane” features whisper-thin vocals, guitar, simple brush stick percussion, and the lyric loop “you gotta have fear in your heart.” The drowning guitar sound of “Nashville,” a song that seems to simultaneously entertain ideas about the perils of fame and personal relationships, employs signiﬁcant repetition that trails and fades off. Tunes such as the low, rumbling “Go West,” a post break-up survival song, and the rugged guitar chug and aggressive percussion of “Jealousy,” which candidly details catching a lover in the act of cheating, represent some of her most straightforward storytelling songs to that point. Phair’s developing conﬁdence as a writer shows in songs such as “Cinco de Mayo” and even the title track, which both have verses and choruses and bridges that do not always immediately seem to be connected. Such asymmetry is a sign of Phair stretching into her creative process. With abrupt, bouncy tempo changes, “Cinco de Mayo” challenges convention and resists a verse-chorus-verse format as stringently as “Chopsticks” or “Crater Lake.” Whitechocolatespaceegg, a reference to her newborn baby son’s shiny bald head, was released in 1998 after a year and a half of preparation. Throughout, the album offers several indications that her songwriting was in transition,

What ultimately makes Phair special is that her songs keep coming back to you—when you’re driving, when you’re showering, when you wake up in the morning. Her best tunes are impossible to forget.

Liz Phair

residing somewhere between her old, indie rock self and a new, more adult contemporary world. At times, the songs bear some vestiges of her earlier, sassier and darker points of view, but overall, they are a portrait of an artist whose life choices—marriage and having a child—have begun to make a palpable impact on her songwriting. In other words, she was starting to grow up, mature, and feel more conﬁdent with her abilities. The songwriting here is brighter, more about stories of interesting characters, and when taken in context of her subsequent albums, which were more overtly commercial, the album does make some logical sense. Her voice, which many critics had describe as unremarkable and ﬂat especially in her live performances, is less of a low, deadpan rumble and instead shows signs of feeling more comfortable in new, warmer territory. The production, by a handful of contributors (Brad Wood, Scott Litt, as well as Phair), feels more streamlined, polished, and brighter. In retrospect, songs such as “Uncle Alvarez” and the album’s lone single “Polyester Bride” strongly hint at her transition from story-songs replete with kooky characters to unabashed attempts at writing songs that have a more typical pop structure. In light of this, perhaps it is no surprise that this was also her ﬁrst album under the merged Matador/Capitol imprint; she was now capable of reaching a larger audience thanks to a larger label infrastructure. Still, there are moments of humor and suggestions of violence. “Johnny Feelgood,” which serves as the negative image to the positive sexual energy that rocks “Supernova,” suggests the sort of offbeat characters that had already become a staple of her songwriting. Her best efforts, though, such as the humorous portrait “Big Tall Man” and “Perfect World,” retain characteristic elements of her songwriting in that they are memorable, melodic, and carefully crafted. In “Perfect World,” Phair strums simply as a melody circles around itself. The track, one of several on the album produced by longtime R.E.M. collaborator Scott Litt, features the refrain, “I want to be cool, tall, vulnerable and luscious/I would have it all if I only had this much.” It is as close as Phair gets to confessing anything self-consciously personal. Elsewhere, she starts to show that she can put commonplace—some critics might say unimaginative—material in a catchy hook. For example, the verses of the song “Love is Nothing” feature some of her signature smart lyrics, but the chorus is simplistic: “Love is nothing, nothing, nothing like they say/You gotta pick up the little pieces every day.” Because of these signs of musical polish and poise, fans did not seem to respond as warmly, but neither did critics or the general music-buying public. The title track from Whip-Smart was the last song she wrote that charted as a single, and Whitechocolatespaceegg peaked at the Billboard 200 albums at thirty-ﬁve, only a gain of eight from the previous album’s peak at twenty-seven. However, Phair’s career trajectory at this point is difﬁcult to ascertain by looking at numbers alone. If anything, the numbers suggest she has the capability to maintain a loyal fan base consistently, regardless of what she does.

343

344

Women Icons of Popular Music

The Self-Titled Album: An Attempt at Commercial Crossover Success It took her surviving a divorce, reaching her mid-thirties, and a having a hiatus of ﬁve years since Whitechocolatespaceegg to release a self-titled album, but she did so in 2003. After the break-up of her marriage, Phair and her son Nicholas relocated to Los Angeles. She was writing songs and working with various producers on and off, trying to recover from her divorce. It was the few songs that she worked on with the producers known in the music business as the Matrix that led long-term fans to call her a sellout. They considered her fourth album overtly commercial, one that seemingly transparently and unapologetically yearned for radio play. Such a move, they argued on the Internet, seemed crass and out of character. But practically speaking, Phair was newly divorced and mother to a ﬁve-year-old; in other words, a single mom. The road to getting her new record made was not easy. Phair initially went into the studio with well-regarded musician and ﬁlm composer Michael Penn but was unhappy with the resulting tracks. She then worked for a bit with songwriter Pete Yorn and his producer R. Walt Vincent. The vestiges of her various choices are apparent on Liz Phair; it is somewhat of a hodgepodge of songs. The material on the album, especially the hit single it produced, “Why Can’t I?,” sometimes ventures slightly into bubble-gum pop territory, with what can easily be described as a teenager’s concern for love, relationships, and sex, although not necessarily in that order. In the chorus for the single, which was wildly successful, she asks one of the perennial questions of selfinﬂicted pain that arise while one is in love, or at least experiencing a serious crush: “Why can’t I breathe/Whenever I think about you?” Reviews were mixed and confused as to why Phair, now a thirty-six-year-old woman, moved away from the music her fans loved into the realm of triteness for many of the tracks. Despite its self-assured, self-referencing title, there is little on Liz Phair to suggest that she has spent the subsequent years since the release of Whitechocolatespaceegg plumbing her inner depths. However, Phair fought with her label to show her old self with the song “Hot White Cum,” inconspicuously called “H.W.C.” on the track listing, thus reassuring her fans that the frank, feisty spirit had not entirely disappeared. In one of her collaborations with the Matrix, she dipped into a relationship with a younger man, trying to catch the attention of someone who is young enough to play video games in “Rock Me.” In “Little Digger,” though, she shows signs of growing up, watching her son trying to ﬁgure out Mommy’s new male friend. Unsurprisingly, this thoughtful song is one of the ﬁve she wrote working with Michael Penn, who is known as a literate introspective songwriter; the experience working with him undoubtedly coaxed some adult insights out of Phair among these other larger, more bombastically treated songs. Throughout the album, though, Phair does not even play much guitar, and her voice here is no longer as throaty and sexy.

Liz Phair

Phair’s artistic paradigm shift came, to some extent, as a result of growing up, causing the songs to come from a different place than before. In her previous albums she didn’t, or even wouldn’t, sing her lyrics, thus enforcing her tough persona. Looking back, the songs on Guyville still hold up. Partially as a move to combat criticism after Liz Phair that she had abandoned her Little Miss Toughie self and partially because she wanted to do something different, Phair took all her material on an acoustic tour for several months leading up to the release of its follow-up, Somebody’s Miracle. The tour served almost as a gentle reminder to fans that Liz Phair was alive and well and still able to strike the listener’s heart with the power of her songs, her sound stripped down to acoustic guitar. Indeed, Phair lost many older fans with her self-titled album but gained some new ones, too. Its signiﬁcant divergence, sonically speaking, certainly garnered her a lot of press. So did the fact that she appeared on the cover practically naked, wearing a skin-colored chemise, her head thrown back and straddling an electric guitar. It’s an image that simultaneously mocks the maledominance of rock and roll and plays into a desire to still be seen as a sex object. Again, her provocative approach confused matters for some newcomers, unless one could see the inherent irony in the photo choice. The songs on Somebody’s Miracle suggest an increasing concern with mundane matters, some of which have not ever really left Phair’s songwriting: falling and staying in love, wondering about love’s ﬂeeting nature, and dealing with the detritus of its destruction. The signiﬁcant difference between her debut material and her later work is in the execution: The songs lack the spiky, almost punk rock–like approach and have become simpler, equally melodic, and, some might argue, more like disposable pop than material that will last and eventually be considered a classic. However difﬁcult it may have been for fans to see the link between her older and newer material, Phair was philosophical about the whole matter and has, in the press, managed to deﬂect a tremendous amount of criticism, warranted or not, for her ability to change. She was articulate about the trajectory of her songwriting, showing how it started with Girlysound, which foreshadowed the type of songs she would write. She mentioned “Wild Thing,” which is a song from those early recorded tapes about a materialistic woman and shopping, and compares it to her later song “Got My Own Thing.” In many ways, Somebody’s Miracle forms a bookend to Guyville, because like Guyville it bears an academic approach: Phair wrote it as a response to Stevie Wonder’s landmark 1976 record Songs in the Key of Life. Somebody’s Miracle reveals a woman who is a single mother, divorced, and trying to act like an adult but without losing that mischievous approach. The title song ﬁnds Phair marveling at marriage but suffering a serious bout of self-esteem issues. The chorus says, “There goes somebody’s miracle walking down the street/There goes some modern fairytale standing next to me.” In this song,

345

346

Women Icons of Popular Music

she is subtly jealous, singing verses that suggest that she might be looking for a husband. This sentiment is in direct contrast to her earlier “Fuck and Run,” in which she plainly declares “I want a boyfriend/I want all that stupid old shit like letters and sodas.” The fourteen tracks on Somebody’s Miracle take their cues from the stronger, more adult alternative pop that surfaced only periodically on Liz Phair. Although the critical response to Somebody’s Miracle, overall, was better than Liz Phair, reviews were still mixed. Praise was qualiﬁed and mostly took aim at the album’s production. Phair’s writing was increasingly more mature and complex, but because of the interference of two hit-maker producers (John Alagia and John Shanks, the latter of whom is known for his work with Sheryl Crow), even the remarkable moments do not stand out as much as they could have because the rest of the tracks are rendered in a dull and uninspired manner. Even her voice was criticized as being inferior to the task she set for it on the songs. But “Table for One,” the album capper, leaves a lasting impression. It is a heartbreaking song that tells the tale of an alcoholic who hides bottles in places where loved ones are bound to ﬁnd them. The song was inspired by her own life, speciﬁcally the alcoholism that ran in her family. Her song “Table for One” is her response to Stevie Wonder’s “Village Ghetto Land,” not necessarily because of its content but because of the heartbreak in Wonder’s song that inspired a response. Her song is written in the ﬁrst person, which makes it startling and seemingly confessional, especially in the chorus. These lines can be read literally—they’re about alcoholism—but with some small bit of interpretation, it can also be discerned that Phair is sending a message about fame and its perils. One of the saving graces of the album is that, despite the pop sheen that had been applied to her most recent releases, on Somebody’s Miracle Phair’s candid take on sex and love are still entwined with self-questioning. She has retained her ﬁre while facing the more disturbing topics of adulthood instead of riding on her earlier glory.

MISSION, MOTIVATION, PROCESS Phair imagines her self as a feminist musician who is rewriting the narrative— rock songs of the largely male-dominated ﬁeld of rock and roll. For all her displays of sexuality (and knowing mockery of it) as a means to sell records (especially in her later albums), Phair is a smart person who admitted she took an academic approach to songwriting. From the beginning with Exile in Guyville to her latest release for Capitol Records, Somebody’s Miracle, Phair took previously established, revered texts—albums—and reimagined them, ﬁltered them through her very particular lens. Phair saw herself as adding a feminist insight and articulating a woman’s point of view to these texts.

Liz Phair

Indeed, Exile In Guyville took its name from an Urge Overkill song, and Phair has discussed at length in the press how this song-cycle bears the inﬂuence of Rolling Stones Exile on Main Street. As much as Phair studied the Stones’s album and proudly developed Guyville in response, it is difﬁcult to see the analogy. Main Street is a rock superstar’s romp through America whereas Guyville is intimate in its vision. Certainly, the material bears that out. On her sophomore release, Whip-Smart, Phair spent a great deal of time reading Shakespeare at a friend’s summer lake house in Michigan. Consequently, critic John Sakamoto suggested that some of the plays’ immersion in stories about male-female role reversals and ideas about ﬂuid gender roles seeped into her songwriting, albeit not overtly. She said when she went back and read Shakespeare for enjoyment, she had not realized the richness of the language and stories. Perhaps because of her academic approach, Phair was not afraid to cite her sources—in this case, acknowledging her inﬂuences, however incidental or unplanned. The title song takes some of the chorus of Malcolm McLaren’s “Double Dutch,” for example, while “X-Ray Man” turns the tables on gender expectations by positioning a lover as someone who is “hyper-tuned into the social structure around us and exhaustingly involved in its subtext. He’s never looking at just what’s on the plate, he’s imagining what went into the preparation” (Sakamoto 1994). “Whip-Smart” plays with ideas of masculinity and femininity, and Phair sings of how the narrator will protect and guide her son. The idea of switching gender roles appears in the idea of a reverse Rapunzel, which then becomes a recurring motif: “I’m gonna lock my son up in a tower till he learns to let his hair down far enough to climb outside.” The verses speak of lessons she wants to impart to him; the chorus is a sing-song, almost nonsensical nurseryrhyme contrast, suggesting the tug of childhood versus the seriousness of growing up, leaving the safety of the home, and accepting responsibilities. Phair went through a transformation in her twenties that can help account somewhat for the commercial sounds of Liz Phair and the subsequent release Somebody’s Miracle. Responding to her detractors that she intentionally changed her sound to achieve mass appeal, she said her earlier records showed how miserable she was during that part of her life. Although she enjoyed playing her earlier songs when she went on the acoustic tour in 2005, listening to the record is a different matter; it transports her back to a difﬁcult time where the unhappiness is obvious. The music, though, for the fans who had lost track of her, seemed so different. When asked about working with the Matrix on Liz Phair, she compared it to a photo shoot. “It was a hoot. It was like getting dressed up for the cover of Vanity Fair” (Havranek 2005). She also said that she did not start working with them because she was not writing songs. Partially, the move to add collaborators enabled her to expand the album’s budget. After she ﬁnished working with Michael Penn, she liked the songs but did not feel 100 percent committed to them; she could not imagine, for example, touring behind them

347

348

Women Icons of Popular Music

for a year. Working with co-writers enabled her to try something new with her approach; it also bought her more time and money from her record label. She acknowledged, though, that fans were justiﬁed in their confusion. Because she was only releasing an album every three to four years, the difference in her music was jarring to listeners who were naturally not part of her daily progression to these new places. But there’s another side to the metamorphosis of Liz Phair. In August 2005, she told writer Chris Dahlen of the San Francisco Weekly that “I didn’t think at this stage I was still supposed to be making indie music—which I just can’t. It’d be fraudulent for me to try to be indie. My life is not indie. I think this time, I tried really hard to be Liz Phairian, for the most part” (Dahlen 2005). Part of that means writing songs about being an adult and having adult responsibilities, such as being a parent. She acknowledged that “Little Digger,” about the process of her son meeting her new boyfriend, was not difﬁcult to write but still affects her when recording and performing it. The subtle transformation of her songwriting since Guyville owes a great deal to her acceptance of her adult self. For instance, the song “Why I Lie” illuminates the complexities of how human beings can be irrational and do bad things that seem to make no sense. Phair has become more generous and forgiving about her assessment of herself and her life. “It became less about ‘you are the problem and here is why.’ It is more like ‘I’ve got problems, and I can live with that’ ” (Havranek 2005). Although it was not the huge success perhaps her label would have liked, Somebody’s Miracle (2005) began in its earliest incarnation as a response to Stevie Wonder’s classic album Songs in the Key of Life. Admittedly, it was a lofty goal. She claimed that she had not discovered that album until much later in life, and had not been able to stop playing it for months on end. She conceived of her follow-up to her self-titled album as a response to Wonder’s album and wanted to write a response directly to each song. She started to make progress, but it was taking too long and Wonder’s important songs— “Isn’t She Lovely” and “I Wish”—were almost insurmountable challenges. She allowed, though, that the song “Stars and Planets” was her response to Wonder’s “Sir Duke.” In this song, she relays what she has learned from working in the music business, with a message to women with whom she has toured in the past. She is trying to tell them that it is not the glamour, the fame, or attention of being a performer but rather a performer’s ability to reveal her humanity. Although she said it is a message to other female musicians, it also can be interpreted as a personal mantra, one that came as a result of battling the machine of pop music. The war between art and commerce, a common struggle in a consumptiondriven culture, required her to take a stand and complete the record. Despite her high artistic aims to write a response to Songs in the Key of Life, Phair remained sanguine about the failed endeavor. “Nothing would be as monumental as Songs in the Key of Life. I didn’t ask it to be I just asked it to be

Liz Phair

reﬂective of my life, which is much smaller than his and I ﬁgured that was okay” (Havranek 2005).

LEGACY AND OTHER INTERESTS Although some might say Phair has long suffered as a bellwether for the music industry, and she has become an icon of feisty female independence for many aspiring, like-minded female musicians, she never asked to be pigeonholed, and she was never afraid to admit her ambitions. To some extent, when she launched a comeback album with Liz Phair she became a victim of media hype. Although she was independent-minded and knew what she wanted once

The Smart and the Sassy With her groundbreaking, devil-may-care punk-pop, Liz Phair has inspired a legion of female artists to question male-dominated rock and roll authority and carve out a place of their own. A few of the most successful have both directly and indirectly shown her influence. As the seeming embodiment of post-feminism rocker chick, Phair could be tough but sweet, confrontationally explicit but anxious—a work in progress who refused to be pigeonholed. Phair’s underground but influential breakthrough release, 1993’s Exile in Guyville, spawned a host of imitators who were met with varying degrees of critical and/or commercial success. One of the most notable came in the form of Canadian singer Alanis Morissette, who released her breakthrough third album, Jagged Little Pill, in summer 1995. The jilted, angry, and self-righteous persona embodied in her hit single “You Oughta Know” was consistently displayed throughout her record, which spawned other hits such as “One Hand in My Pocket” and “Ironic.” The record was a multiplatinum success, netting her several Grammy Awards in 1996, including Album and Song of the Year. Phair’s success also helped pave the way for emotionally expressive and unapologetically female perspective from artists such as Tracy Bonham, Mary Lou Lord, Garbage (fronted by Shirley Manson), Natalie Imbruglia, Meredith Brooks, and even Fiona Apple. In 2002, seventeen-year-old Canadian Avril Lavigne emerged with her debut album Let Go, bolstered by “Complicated.” The record was a multiplatinum success; the music and Lavigne became highly marketable. Many critics quickly saw connections between the young, brash punk-pop of Lavigne and Phair’s earlier work. When Phair launched her self-titled comeback album in 2003, she worked with the Matrix, the songwriting team that penned hits for Lavigne’s debut, her radio-friendly gold-selling single “Why Can’t I?”

349

350

Women Icons of Popular Music

she set her mind to a particular vision, she never set out to stay an independent musician without the support of a larger infrastructure. Most people assume that because her records were initially released on Matador, then an independent label, and then later, on Capitol, that she was signed to Capitol. But like many other artists of her stature, Phair fell victim to consolidation and acquisition. Somehow, she managed to keep making records with Matador as it was ﬁrst bought by Atlantic, and then by Capitol Records. She decided to take charge of her career and be, as she said, “proactive” about it by going to Capitol’s headquarters and introducing herself to the staff. During the time her career took off and she became a ﬁxture in independent and alternative rock music, other female musicians and female-fronted bands gained attention for similar attributes. Artists such as P.J. Harvey, Belly, the Breeders, Juliana Hatﬁeld, Babes in Toyland, the Spinanes, Hole, L7, Tsunami, and Throwing Muses were redeﬁning the male rock world by singing about lust, power, love, and ambition from a woman’s point of view. Phair’s work was not developing in a vacuum; she had plenty of simpatico performers, and their collective existence and success undoubtedly created a sense that women in rock were a force to be reckoned with (see sidebar). Unsurprisingly, Phair has announced her next album of original material will be released independently, through ATO Records, in fall 2008. Her career has taught her to be conscious of her need to ﬁnd balance between her professional and personal life and she, like many artists, has learned that there are alternatives to the corporate record, interviewing circuit, and tour equation. Only time will tell what shape her career will take—she is even reportedly working on a novel—but there is little doubt that she will create a stir no matter what path she takes.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Exile in Guyville. Matador, 1993 Whip-Smart. Matador, 1994 Whitechocolatespaceegg. Matador/Capitol, 1998

FURTHER READING Barrera, Sandra. “Phair has Flair for Podcasting.” The Times Union, Albany, NY (November 5, 2005). Billboard Album Reviews. VNU Entertainment News Wire (October 10, 2005). Carr, David. “For Those Pining for the Old Sound, the Singer Says It’s Time to Move On.” New York Times (August 2, 2005). Dahlen, Chris. “Exile in Mainstream: Can the Songwriter’s Follow-up To the Disastrous Liz Phair Reconcile Her Alt-rock Past With Her Pop-Rock Present?” San Francisco Weekly (August 17, 2005).

Liz Phair

DeRogatis, Jim. “Stardom Hangs in the Balance for Liz Phair.” Chicago Sun-Times (September 12, 1993). DeRogatis, Jim, and Kevin Michael Williams. “Liz Phair Makes ‘Whip-Smart’ Musical Memories.” Chicago Sun-Times (September 11, 1994). Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. “Liz Phair. Review.” All Music Guide. Available online at wm06.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=&sql=10:gxfrxqeald6e. Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. “Somebody’s Miracle. Review.” All Music Guide. Available online at wm06.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:3jftxqlsldhe~T1. Havranek, Carrie. “Five Minutes with Liz Phair.” Performing Songwriter (December 2005). Heim, Joe. “Mothers Who Rock.” Salon.com (August 1, 2003). Available online at dir.salon.com/story/mwt/feature/2003/08/01/rockermoms/index1.html. Kot, Greg. “Exile in Guyville. Review.” Rolling Stone 658 (June 10, 1993). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/lizphair/albums/album/301875/review/ 5940996/exile_in_guyville. Pareles, Jon. “Blunt Rock: Liz Phair.” New York Times (October 2, 1994). Pareles, Jon. “Review/Rock: Liz Phair in New Round of Songwriting Creativity.” New York Times (April 11, 1994). Sakamoto, John. “The Phair Sexes.” Toronto Sun (September 27, 1994). Shefﬁeld, Rob. “Somebody’s Miracle. Review.” Rolling Stone online (December 20, 2005). Available at www.rollingstone.com/artists/lizphair/albums/album/7640646/ review/7685167/somebodys_miracle. Snyder, Michael. “Liz Phair Rocks Male-Dominated Scene.” San Francisco Chronicle (August 8, 1993). Tillotson, Kristin. “Fan Phair: With Her Name Atop Three ‘Best of 93’ Lists, IndieRocker Liz Phair is Riding High in Guyville.” Star Tribune, Minneapolis, MN (March 8, 1994). Tomlinson, Sarah. “Liz Phair: Somebody’s Miracle. Review.” Boston Globe (October 14, 2005). Vaziri, Aidin. “Pop Quiz: Liz Phair.” San Francisco Chronicle (October 2, 2005). Walters, Barry. “Liz Phair. Review.” Rolling Stone 926 (July 10, 2003). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/lizphair/albums/album/291858/review/ 6067974/ liz_phair.

351

Courtesy of Photofest

Bonnie Raitt

354

Women Icons of Popular Music

OVERVIEW

She watched me struggle for years. I’d like to think that she learned something about dignity and integrity.

Although Bonnie Raitt’s ﬁrst dabblings with playing music as a career began to take shape when she was a student at Radcliffe College in Massachusetts in the —John Raitt late 1960s, it took her almost twenty years of recording albums and touring to experience a breakthrough that brought her to a large, commercial audience. Critics had been following her career during those twenty years, ever since her eponymous debut in 1971, and praising her rough-hewn, earthy voice, her no-nonsense approach to song material, her strong persona, and her ability to blend rock, folk, and blues in a new way. During these early years in her career she covered songs in many genres, from pop ballads to jazz standards and blues staples and did not see much of a reason to distinguish among them. However, her genre-crossing approach confused the music business for years— they did not know quite what to do with her—so Bonnie Raitt’s music was extremely slow to catch on among a wider audience. It was not until the release of her tenth album Nick of Time in 1989 that she was able to experience the acclaim and the record sales that had eluded her previously. Raitt overcame many challenges throughout her career. She is the daughter of Broadway actor, John Raitt, known for his roles in Carousel, Oklahoma!, and The Pajama Game, which put her up against a higher level of scrutiny than an ordinary emerging female musician. In her formative years, she was more known as an excellent blues guitarist (especially slide) and an interpreter of others’ work rather than as a songwriter in her own right. Raitt is known for performing songs by such artists as John Hiatt, Jackson Browne, Del Shannon, John Prine, Wayne Kirkpatrick, and Little Jimmy Scott. Covering such traditional songs, most of which were written or popularized by men, signiﬁed a woman’s entitlement to claim a part of and interpret the blues canon. Her success is as much a result of her tenacity as it is of fortunate timing. She also has battled drug and alcohol addiction. Her triumph was all the more sweet with the release of 1989’s Nick of Time because the music business more or less had written her off as a failure. Instead, a grateful and sober Raitt gave a Grammy speech in 1990 in which she choked back tears. She walked away with four awards, including Album of the Year, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for the title track, and also Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. Additionally, the song “I’m in the Mood,” which appeared on John Lee Hooker’s 1989 star-studded album The Healer, won her a Best Traditional Blues Recording Grammy. The success fueled the great reception of her follow-up, Luck of the Draw, which critics proclaimed a “comeback.” Raitt reminded reporters that she had always been around. Nick of Time (1989) peaked at number one on the Billboard 200 chart; Luck of the Draw, in 1991, peaked at number two on the same chart, and Longing in Their Hearts (1994) went to number one.

Bonnie Raitt

Raitt won four more Grammys in 1991, including Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal for the song “Good Man, Good Woman” from the album Luck of the Draw and another one for that album—Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. That album also yielded a Grammy for “Something to Talk About,” which won her Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Finally, Longing in Their Hearts, released in 1994, nabbed her a Best Pop Vocal Album. Nick of Time was ﬁve times multiplatinum as of 1998, and Luck of the Draw has fared even better selling over 7 million records as of 1998. Her collaborative efforts on “SVR Shufﬂe” from the album Tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughn earned a ninth Grammy in 1996 for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. Many of her releases from the 1990s through 2000s have achieved at least gold status, whereas the only ones of her earlier works to achieve a minimum gold status are Sweet Forgiveness in 1980 and Give It Up in 1985. It is easy to see the surge in sales ever since Nick of Time’s release in 1989. Her songs have appeared on a number of different Billboard charts, which is a testament to her widespread appeal across multiple genres. Raitt left her mark on the Pop Singles chart with 1977’s “Runaway,” on the Country Singles chart in 1980 for “Don’t It Make You Wanna Dance,” and ﬁnally on the Adult Contemporary chart with the song “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” which peaked at number six. The song “Have a Heart” peaked at number three and “Something to Talk About” peaked at number ﬁve on the Billboard Hot 100. As she and her voice matured, her songs and albums tended to stay in the Adult Contemporary chart, most of them at least making an appearance in the Top 40. Raitt broke a considerable amount of new ground. She was the ﬁrst female singer and songwriter to blend rock and blues and achieve critical and commercial acclaim. Her career has made possible the career of many younger artists, from the immensely successful Sheryl Crow, ten years her junior, to blues howlers such as Susan Tedeschi, Vonda Shepherd, Shemeika Copeland, Melissa Etheridge, Wynona Judd, Shelby Lynne, and Joss Stone. In 2000, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Raitt’s success also shows that surprises can still happen in the music business. It is remarkable that at the age of forty a woman can gain recognition for her years of hard work and that the music business, which so often and so increasingly favors youth, does not forget those who have come so far and achieved something artistically meritorious. Unusually, Raitt’s breakthrough indeed came later in life, but fortunately for her, it was a time in which the music business and the radio programmers were perhaps a bit more willing to play more than one female artist in a row—the 1990s. During the decade there was an increase of female artists and a heightened awareness of the cultural and commercial power of women. There is an unanswered question, though, of whether Raitt exempliﬁes a crossover success or whether the American pop music audience was ready for something different—a type of music that ﬂuidly and thoughtfully blended blues, pop, and rock and a singer whose voice resonated a sense of soul and passion.

355

356

Women Icons of Popular Music

EARLY YEARS

[A]nybody who has something to say can stand up and say it. I didn’t grow up in a rigid structure, and religion for me is more of a spiritual and social leaning or influence.

Growing up, the Raitt family spent time on both the East and West Coasts. Raitt was born in between brothers David and Steven, and as a child, she lived in Coldwater Canyon outside Los Angeles, California. The family moved east for her father’s successful Broadway career, and she graduated from high school in Poughkeepsie, New York. With a famous show business father and a piano-playing mother, Marjorie Haydock, it is not surprising that Raitt became a musician. In fact, her parents met while performing a college alumni production of the musical The Vagabond; they played opposite one another. She said her parents encouraged her to pursue music. Music was everywhere, but it was not something forced on the kids; it felt natural, and singing came as naturally as speaking. Raitt said she and her siblings all sang. As much as she was formed by music, the fact that she had a famous father added another level of scrutiny to her career than if she had risen from obscurity. Raitt, however, did not follow the same path as her parents; instead of belting out show tunes she responded to blues, rock, and folk and started to process them all in her own unique way. As a child, she would play with her brothers and compete with them and described herself as a tomboy (Bego 2002, 10). As a girl in a family wherein her dad related better to the boys, Raitt was determined to not let her gender stop her. “I couldn’t stand the way girls got the second best of everything. . . . [T]o me, it was the same as black people getting treated as second-class citizens” (Bego 2002, 10). Like other female musicians, including Joan Baez, Raitt grew up in a Quaker family, which informed her approach to the world. Additionally, her parents were Scottish, and they both grew up poor; the experience impacted the way they raised their children. The children did get a small allowance, but if they wanted something they had to earn it. As a Quaker child, the democratic and paciﬁst underpinnings of the religion affected her too, but activism was never far from her heart. “I was going to save the world from the time I was eleven,” she said (Gaar 2002, 157). She took to wearing a peace symbol necklace around this time too—it was the dawn of 1960s, and the counterculture was moving from the beatniks to the hippies. As a teen, Raitt said she never got along with her mother and that they were both unhappy people. Her father spent a lot of time on the road and away from home, which must have taken a toll on her parents’ marriage. She also has said that she felt as though she were competing with her mother for her father’s attention. When her parents divorced, it was not surprising. Raitt’s mother had given up her own musical career to stay home and raise the children. The experience of witnessing her mother’s sacriﬁce and her subsequent unhappiness in her marriage left an indelible impact on Raitt, who, like her

Bonnie Raitt

father, continued to work hard and stay an active, creative person no matter what the cost was. Years later, in 1990, Raitt would take pains to tell reporters that she and her mother had repaired their relationship and that “I have a really good relationship with my mom now” (Hencke 1990). Her father would eventually remarry. Despite their upbringing in southern California, near Los Angeles, Raitt described her parents as having old-time values, which enabled her to stay grounded as a person. After learning piano but feeling intimidated by her mother’s talent, Raitt decided on guitar and received her ﬁrst one at age eight for Christmas. Raitt did not take guitar lessons; she ﬁgured it out herself and played what was on her records. Every summer as a child she attended camp on the East Coast, where she was inspired by her camp counselor’s record collection, especially the material of Odetta, Joan Baez, the Kingston Trio, and other folk revivalists and blues musicians of the day. She developed a reputation as being a gifted player and was often encouraged to perform at camp but did not immediately see it as a career option. Hearing the 1963 album Blues at Newport changed her, exposing her to the world of the blues guitar. John Lee Hooker, Mississippi John Hurt, and especially the white slide guitarist John Hammond showed her that it was possible for a white man to play black man’s music and turn it into something new. She spent so much time with that album that the ﬁrst blues song she taught herself was John Hurt’s “Candy Man.” Raitt was equally taken with the possibilities of folk music. She was torn between emulating Joan Baez and Bessie Smith. So taken by the burgeoning folk music scene in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Raitt chose Radcliffe College because of its proximity. “I just couldn’t wait. I was playing guitar and I was a real folkie. It wasn’t that I wanted to play music so much, it’s just that I wanted to be around it” (Gaar 2002, 156). At Radcliffe, a competitive, small, women’s liberal arts college, Raitt majored in social relations and African studies. She admitted to being as excited by the political scene—it was the late 1960s, after all—as much as the dating possibilities; the ratio of men to women in the surrounding area worked heavily in her favor. Those high hopes were met with a reality she could not have anticipated. A year after Raitt enrolled in college, the music scene died down and Club 47, where she met Jackson Browne, closed. But she was not deterred by these minor institutional changes. She also met Dick Waterman who became her boyfriend ﬁrst and manager later. Initially, she had not set out to become a performer, but she saw a woman at a club near campus performing “500 Miles” and thought she could do better. Waterman, who has managed the careers of many blues musicians, helped her get some gigs at clubs in the Boston-Cambridge area. She started performing while taking a semester off from college, but within two years, Raitt dropped out of college to pursue music full time. She still insists she never expected to have a career in music. “Once you get paid for doing something you love to do anyway, it’s pretty

357

358

Women Icons of Popular Music

hard to turn around and go back to school. I haven’t had to do it yet” (Bego 2002, 25). At the age of twenty, she appeared with Buddy Guy and Junior Wells as part of their act opening for the Rolling Stones—no small feat for someone so young and an even bigger feat for a white woman. The audience was surprised by a small, strange red-headed white girl playing Robert Johnson songs on a slide guitar. Soon, she began to perform with an impressive array of blues legends, including Howlin’ Wolf, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Muddy Waters, Son House, and John Lee Hooker. Around this time, too, she discovered the music of 1920s female blues singer Beulah “Sippie” Wallace, whose music’s sexual innuendos really took Raitt by surprise. Raitt was starting to see the possibilities for what she could do as a performer; in fact, she would go on to cover Wallace’s “Mighty Tight Woman” on her debut. Her career was built in a somewhat grassroots manner. After her time in the Boston area she spent some time playing in the Philadelphia area while Waterman lived there. Eventually she made it to New York City. After she had been playing consistently and working with Waterman, who was well respected in the music business, Raitt developed a strong reputation. Label scouts and reporters consistently sought out her shows, which created a growing buzz that enabled Raitt to sign a deal with Warner Brothers Records in spring 1971. Although at ﬁrst she faced an ethical dilemma by signing with a large label, she saw it as a way to do what she loved and receive ﬁnancial support. Signing to Warner made sense, as it was home to Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, and Randy Newman at the time, and large labels were not yet viliﬁed the way they would come to be in later years. Her very ﬁrst album, the self-titled Bonnie Raitt, was recorded in a very loose manner in a two-car garage called Sweet Jane Studios outside Minneapolis. The approach, with the music recorded on a simple four-track device, facilitated a certain level of spontaneity and an organic, raw sound. Players such as Junior Wells, A.C. Reed, and her brother Steve, who was living in Minnesota at the time, offered some charming percussive touches to the song “I Ain’t Blue.” The self-titled release was lauded for not only the unusual breadth of her eleven selections but for her soulful vocals and guitar skills. Often, when an artist releases her ﬁrst record it does not always suggest the potential that can surface later. But in the case of Raitt the selections truly foreshadowed the path she would take through her career, with covers from Robert Johnson to Steven Stills and Sippie Wallace, along with two of her own compositions—“Thank You,” which features her on piano, and “Finest Lovin’ Man.” On her debut, Raitt’s voice never overpowers her songs—her voice is simultaneously natural, warm, and smart, the voice of a woman who can lay back a bit and trust her musical instincts to just guide her through each song’s journey.

I wanted to be the female Muddy Waters or Fred McDowell. There was a romance about drinking and doing blues.

Bonnie Raitt

For the most part, critics have consistently lauded her work, especially when she struggled to break through commercially. Rolling Stone gave her a bit of a left-handed compliment, calling her self-titled Bonnie Raitt “an unusual collection of songs performed by an unusual assortment of musicians,” and found fault with the low production values of the record and the inconsistent quality of material (Hamel 1972). The encompassing, generous approach to roots music represented on her album showed the ﬁrst signs of her artistic vision. The sheer variety and inconsistencies, however, foreshadow her struggle of the 1970s and most of the 1980s and the difﬁculty in ﬁnding a comfortable, successful spot on the radio airwaves. Raitt was always certain of her musical preference, but the challenge was to ﬁnd an audience savvy enough to understand her approach. Looking back, she said she can’t believe how young she sounded. “I thought I was so tough” (Bego 2002, 33).

CAREER PATH Building a Career and Finding an Audience During the 1970s, Raitt was busy, quietly and consistently building her career while her contemporaries, artists such as Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Linda Ronstadt, and others, continued to eclipse her commercially. Each time she went into the studio she struggled to ﬁnd a really suitable producer who would be her musical translator. “I had a very speciﬁc taste in what I want and what I like but I don’t [sic] know how to tell someone to change what they’re playing, whereas a producer does,” Raitt said (Gaar 2002, 157). She went through several different producers in the 1970s as she tried to ﬁnd a wider audience. Writing in Newsweek, Ron Givens noted how her sound changed throughout this decade because of the producers involved: The band on her debut was loose and funky whereas by the end of the decade, The Glow (1979) gave an impression that she was a pop standard-bearer. It took until 1977 for her to achieve signiﬁcant radio play. Raitt did not necessarily yearn for commercial stardom, but she nevertheless felt frustrated by what wasn’t happening. Her second album, Give it Up, appeared just one year later in 1972 and featured songs by some singer/songwriters who were coming into their own at this time such as Jackson Browne’s “Under the Falling Sky” and Eric Katz’s “Love Has No Pride.” The album also had a few R&B standards, and covers of other emerging songwriters such as Chris Smither’s “Love Me Like a Man.” Critic Jon Landau acknowledged in Rolling Stone that Raitt “successfully handles a far greater range of styles and material than on her ﬁrst album and has produced a more interesting and satisfying record in the process” (Landau 1972). Give it Up shows some welcome polish in its production and Landau saw Raitt’s voice front and center. “Bonnie comes out right on top of the

359

360

Women Icons of Popular Music

whole thing, her precise, erotic, thoroughly disciplined voice providing a perfect center for this gutsy enterprise” (Landau 1972). Three of her own songs make an appearance on Give it Up, including the title track–inspired “Give it Up or Let Me Go.” It’s a classic, done-me-wrong song found so often in the blues tradition, whose refrain is “Oh honey if you want me to love you/You’ve got to give it up or let me go.” But Raitt does not take the Chicago blues route with this number—instead, it’s adorned with New Orleans–sounding horns and jangling guitars, and Raitt’s voice rides high over it all. Other songs Raitt penned include “Nothing Seems to Matter” and “You Told Me Baby.” Early on in her career, though, critics were quick to point out her strengths, her weaknesses, and her appeal. During the early to mid-1970s, when Raitt only had a few albums under her belt and was still in her early twenties, many critics called her one of the best white blues singers in the country. That title was rarely qualiﬁed with a gender reference because she was still unusual: a young white female musician in predominately old, black, male territory. In a review of one of Raitt’s shows in 1973, John Rockwell wrote in the New York Times that Raitt seemed a bit shy on stage but that her ability to express her emotions made her stand out (Rockwell 1973). Just a week later, columnist Les Ledbetter wrote that Raitt sang about the lonely territory of smart, tough women for whom personal freedom is more important than steadfast love— territory that Raitt would come to inhabit throughout her career. At the young age of twenty-three, Raitt was convincingly singing about topics that were beyond her years. In the article, she told Ledbetter that contrary to what her songs might indicate, she was not unhappy all the time. “I really like sad songs, but sometimes it’s like getting paid to split yourself open, like people were paying to see me bleed” (Ledbetter 1973). In 1975, just a few years after the magazine started and only a few years into her career, Raitt appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, and the story’s headline read “Daughter of the Blues.” The story, written by Ben Fong-Torres, followed her as she shared a bill with John Prine and Tom Waits in Nashville during a tour. Because Raitt was still a relative novelty—a blues woman in a man’s world—the author went to great lengths to show her interaction with her tour mates. He called her a “romantic socialist, a politician of the heart . . . She sings put-’em-up, we-take-no-shit songs to men, but often pines and cries in her songs” (Fong-Torres 1975). He portrayed her as downto-earth, easy to talk to, and not interested in the trappings of success, but astutely observed that because of the causes she was engaged in—donating to Tom Hayden’s California senatorial campaign for example, or her efforts to funnel money into community causes and political groups—she needed the clout that success would bring to help get things done. Raitt was candid at times about her attraction to blues and her ability to thrive in a man’s genre. “I was the only girl and I probably started to make off-color jokes as a way

Bonnie Raitt

361

to get in with the guys. And ever since I can remember, it’s been me and a bunch of guys” (Fong-Torres I think women like me because they don’t have to be 1975). She became proliﬁc during the 1970s and followed jealous. I’m not ridiculously Give it Up with three albums: Takin’ My Time; Street- beautiful and I’m not lights, with covers of Joni Mitchell and James Taylor; wealthy, and I’m not and Home Plate. During these releases critics were intimidatingly talented. I’m noting that it seemed like her label was trying to make probably as close to a normal a star out of her but perhaps did not know the best person as you’ll find in the way to do it. About Streetlights, Rolling Stone writer music business. Stephen Holden noted that producer Jerry Ragovoy treated Raitt’s voice “as a beautiful artifact” (Holden 1974), but unfortunately, her blues singing—her biggest asset—was not played up enough. In Holden’s opinion, the album suffered not because Raitt was not best served by the material or that the production stiﬂed her in other ways, but because it seemed like Raitt was not having fun. Enter 1977’s Sweet Forgiveness and her cover of Del Shannon’s song “Runaway,” which brought her career a boost when it attained some radio play on the pop charts. Although the track barely made it near the Billboard Top 40, peaking at number ﬁfty-seven, the album went as high as twenty-ﬁve on Billboard’s pop album chart. Despite the fact that she had released several critically acclaimed records in the 1970s, Sweet Forgiveness merited some harsh criticism from Rolling Stone writer Peter Herbst. “[A]lthough sweet in spots, is in the end deeply frustrating” (Herbst 1977). The songs are partly uninspired, he asserted, along with the musicianship. Herbst also said that the album was troubled because of producer Paul Rothchild’s “singular lack of imagination” and said that the hit “Runaway” was the album’s “severest embarrassment.” However stinging, the criticism demonstrated the continuous inability to consistently ﬁnd a producer who knew how to play up her warmth, her blues voice, and her guitar skills, and who would make sure she was working with the best material possible. Her label hoped that the modest success with “Runaway” would mean bigger things were on the way. Sadly, that was not meant to be. Failure, Musical Homelessness, and Addiction: 1980s For Bonnie Raitt, much of the 1980s was a painful confrontation with alcoholism and the cruel reality of the bottom line interests of the record labels. For The Glow (1979) she turned to her then-manager Peter Asher rather than work with Paul Rothchild again. Asher’s approach allowed Raitt to remain a little rough around the edges but still allowed the listener to come away with the sense that the album was a professional product. Raitt turned in some

362

Women Icons of Popular Music

inspired covers, including “I Thank You” and “Bye Bye Baby,” but only offered one original, the sassy “Standin’ by the Same Old Love,” with a scorching guitar. Three years later, she released Green Light, which features more of her own guitar work than had been heard on previous albums. Rob Fraboni, who had worked with the disparate likes of jazz musician Wayne Shorter and The Band, was her latest producer. Critics such as Don Shewey were still lamenting the fact that such a great singer and guitarist with tremendous appeal “has never made an LP that’s lived up to her potential”(Shewey 1982). Raitt wanted to try to capture live energy and spontaneity on the record. Although Green Light, like many of her releases, was met as usual with good reviews, it was unable to connect with a wider audience. The same problems were resurfacing: some good songs and some uninspired ones, too. Despite the hopeful title of Green Light, it was anything but that. In fact, it turned into something more akin to a red light because Warner Brothers Records dropped her from their roster in 1983, a day after she had completed her follow-up album, Nine Lives. It was eventually released in 1986, after Raitt had convinced the label to let her redo half of the tracks. Raitt tried to keep her career aﬂoat using her savings for touring. Unfortunately, it was the worst-selling album of her career and critically unmemorable and indistinct. On the heels of such dismal critical and commercial reception, Raitt considered working with the extremely successful and singular artist Prince—he had asked her to join his Paisley Park label—for her next record. Raitt even got so far as to put together a few tracks with him and entertained the possibility of doing a music video. The project fell apart for a few reasons, as Prince left to go on tour and Raitt was going through a difﬁcult breakup that left her single for the ﬁrst time in twenty years. Additionally, she was depressed by the nation’s conservative leadership, and her work ﬁghting nuclear power initiatives in the United States and Central America left her disheartened, too. But the brooding did not last for too long, and all of these experiences added up. She says “[F]rankly, that was the thing that made me have enough self-respect to slap me into wanting to do something about it” (Givens 1989). The dismissal from Warner was compounded by her growing dependency on alcohol. So in 1987, she stopped drinking and became healthier. By early 1987, Raitt joined a program for recovering alcoholics and had entered therapy. Later, she would sound sanguine about the issue. “I wasn’t rolling around vomiting. I just partied too much, and I put on a lot of weight. There are people I know who party and don’t get fat and don’t stop, because they are still rich. But I was going to run out of money” (Hencke 1990). In 1989 she told Newsweek that “I did the best job I could for Warners [sic] and they didn’t seem to appreciate it” (Givens 1989). Creatively and personally, Raitt stalled out in the 1980s, but her battle with demons, as many artists’ careers have illustrated, created fertile songwriting ground.

Bonnie Raitt

The Nick of Time and the Luck of the Draw For Nick of Time, her ﬁrst album with Capitol and her tenth overall, Raitt would work with producer Don Was, who had previously produced the quirky debut of the B-52s and was a member of the post-Motown soul band Was (not Was). Somehow, he was able to transcend what previous producers had been unable even to accomplish. It would become one of her most commercially successful records, marking her ﬁrst Top 40 entry in seven years and her ﬁrst album to reach number one. Nick of Time was Raitt’s ﬁrst sober album, she admitted to Newsweek magazine, and the material showed some growth, too. She wrote two songs for it, and the bluesy pop she had reﬁned for nearly twenty years contributed to creating a richness, wisdom, and warmth throughout the record. Even though the material was not strikingly different from its predecessors, Stephen Holden of the New York Times said it was consistently stronger and the rhythm and blues arrangements are “reﬁned but unfussy” (Holden 1990). Writing in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, James Henke saw a subtle change in her content, saying it “makes no ostensible concessions to current popular tastes, and it addresses such grown-up topics as having children and coming to terms with old age” (Hencke 1990). This was especially evident on the Raitt-penned title track, whose frankness set the tone for the album’s ensuing ten tracks. The album’s stellar material includes a spirited cover of John Hiatt’s song “Thing Called Love,” which features the memorable lyric in the chorus, “Are you ready for the thing called love/Don’t come from you and me it comes from up above.” Smartly, “Thing Called Love” provides a blast of energy after “Nick of Time,” which is grateful, reﬂective, and self-aware. “Nick of Time” peaked at number ten on the Adult Contemporary Billboard chart, and “Thing Called Love” hit number eleven on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks. Elsewhere, the soulful but tough, reggae-infused cover of a Bonnie Hayes tune “Have a Heart” fared well by going all the way to number three on the Adult Contemporary chart in 1990. Other standout tracks show her emotional range, including her own composition, an ode to rootlessness called “The Road’s My Middle Name,” which caps the album, in comparison to the gorgeous, piano-based ballad “I Ain’t Gonna Let You Break My Heart Again” and the sassy, growling, rocker “Real Man.” Nick of Time earned her a slew of accolades, and some critics called it her comeback album, to which Raitt disputed, “I never had a hit record, so how can I come back? I didn’t go away. I’ve been on the road for 20 years” (Givens 1989). Writing in Newsweek, Ron Givens said the album showcased much of her talent with energetic romps and slower ballads, while spanning her now familiar turf of folk, country, blues, and R&B. He noted that her best work balanced the sexy aggression of blues and sensitive, romantic singer/songwriter genre. Often, she is described as alternating between sassy or plaintive, depending on the material, and Nick of Time showed Raitt’s comfort with such variety.

363

364

Women Icons of Popular Music

In her speech at the 1989 Grammy Awards for Best Female Rock Performance—the ﬁrst of four she would win that night—Raitt said, “I don’t know what to say. This is a real miracle for me, after all this time” (Bego 2002, 4). She went on to thank the usual—manager, label, lawyer, family, God, etc.—but stopped mid-sentence, her eyes welling with tears. A few months later, she would tell a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that “I’m glad God brought me to this now, meaning that I got pulled out of the ﬁre,” alluding to her past problems with alcohol. Indeed, Nick of Time reﬂects what happened to her, and its success cannot be completely understood without considering her age—she was at the time a baby-boomer who had just turned forty. At the time of the ceremony, her album had sold a million copies; in two short months after the ceremony, 700,000 more copies were sold. After its release, she toured extensively and took along the British folk singer and guitarist, Richard Thompson, another critically hailed artist for whom larger commercial success has been elusive. Shortly after, Warner Brothers put together a twenty-song album The Bonnie Raitt Collection and released it in 1990. It begins with “Finest Lovin’ Man” and features two duets—a live take of “Women Be Wise” with Sippie Wallace and another live song, “Angel from Montgomery,” with John Prine. But the success of Luck of the Draw did not come without some anxiety and some planning beforehand. After the news of the Grammy nominations, Raitt secluded herself in northern California to write some songs and sort out her emotions. If she won a Grammy and had written some songs, she would not feel that Nick of Time was an accident. She struggled through it and wrote three of the four songs that wound up on 1991’s Luck of the Draw, which was ultimately most important to her—not any expectation of accolades (Bego 2002, 145). The seclusion was a smart move, because the record contained more of her own songs than any album to date. It was also rewarding because half of the album’s twelve songs wound up in a comfortable position on a number of Billboard charts. Luck of the Draw was immensely successful; it peaked at number two on the Billboard 200 chart and it was still selling throughout the 1990s—by April 1998, it sold 7 million copies and Nick of Time 5 million copies. Raitt received her ﬁrst title as co-producer working with Don Was on Luck of the Draw, and four of her own songs appeared, including a song she cowrote with her husband Michael O’Keefe called “One Part Be My Lover.” She said the lyrics were from a poem he had written when he was angry with her; he put it near the bed so she would see it when she woke up. Later, she wrote music for it. “It’s about the point in the relationship where you’re both so beat up from before that you’re just terriﬁed. Trying to ﬁgure out whether it was really happening or whether we just weren’t meant for each other, because I was scared” (Bego 2002, 161). The two had met in fall 1989 when she was singing on a charity album; she contributed the homelessness awareness song “Wake Up America,” and he directed the music video. The relationship was

Bonnie Raitt

slow to develop, with vacillation on her part. Their rhythms were different; she was a night owl and as an actor he was accustomed to early mornings on Hollywood sets. They also were both intensely focused on their careers, which allowed Raitt to maintain a sense of independence that she had enjoyed for three years prior to their relationship and for the ﬁrst time in her adult life. The two were engaged on Christmas 1990 and married April 28, 1991. Luck of the Draw was indeed lucky, as Raitt again won several Grammy Awards, for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, and Best Rock Performance for a Duo or Group for the bluegrass romp “Good Man, Good Woman” with Delbert McClinton, who also played harmonica. Most noteworthy, though, were the smash hits that spent time on the Billboard charts. These include the joyful and smart “Something to Talk About,” penned by Shirley Eikhard, which hit number ﬁve on both the Adult Contemporary and Billboard Hot 100 charts in 1991 and the tender, bittersweet ballad “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” which peaked at number six on the Adult Contemporary chart and features piano playing by Bruce Hornsby. Lauded as one of the most plaintive and emotional songs she has ever recorded in her career, Raitt admitted that during the recording, she “couldn’t even get through that song. I kept crying at the line—that’s the saddest line I’ve ever heard” (Bego 2002, 160). MTV and VH-1 regularly played the sweet video for “Something to Talk About,” which featured Raitt juxtaposed with images of couples of various ages and races dancing together. Some critics thought it was simply a retread of Nick of Time. Granted, Raitt did not mess with the style that had worked on the previous record, but this time around, she contributed more of her own material, including “Come to Me,” “Tangled and Dark,” and “All at Once.” And despite the fact that she was now a married woman, the material was anything but consistently sunny and carefree. For Raitt, things were starting to get interesting; she was starting to identify herself as a songwriter. Still, despite her success, she expressed some frustration about her own abilities, saying that “I wish I had more ‘chops’ sometimes to play what I hear in my head . . . but I really am not as much a student of the guitar as I am of the song itself. I do it instinctively. Sometimes I sing and play lines together, but it’s kind of arbitrary” (Bego 2002, 159). Whatever Raitt was doing, it was working, and she certainly had more than earned the good will, trust, and camaraderie of the musicians she had been working with on these releases. Her producer, Don Was, saw himself as someone who helped her get across what is so innate to her. “Bonnie only chooses songs that directly pertain to her life. . . . She’s not acting. She doesn’t need enhancing. People are moved by what she sings, and I just try to get that across” (Bego 2002, 163). Rolling Stone recognized that emotional component, too. Elysa Gardner wrote, “Her voice, a little less sweet than it was in the seventies but handsomely seasoned and agile, has been most emotive in recent years; age and experience have endowed Raitt with a subtlety and an

365

366

Women Icons of Popular Music

effortless emotional authority reminiscent of great soul singers, as well as the blues legends she emulated in her youth” (Gardner 1997). Raitt again served as co-producer along with Don Was for the 1994 Capitol release Longing In Their Hearts, which also fared well. It was successful quickly—simultaneously certiﬁed for gold and platinum in May 1994 and to date has sold 2 million copies. Some critics thought Longing was even better than her previous two releases because it consistently shows the culmination of her talents as a producer, writer, musician, and singer. She contributed ﬁve tracks, and she and her husband co-wrote the album’s title track, which hints at the restlessness and ambivalence that relationships can sometimes experience. The Raitt-penned “Feeling of Falling,” heavy with organs, wrestles with adult love and stability. Another one of her other songs, “Circle Dance,” is a somber tune that shows empathy and maturity and suggests a reﬂection on her parents’ relationship. She sings, “I’m not her and you’re not him/Just comes out that way.” Throughout the record, her voice draws you in and keeps you close in her company, making for an engaging listen of her twelve bluesy rock tracks. Phase Three: Building On Her Success The extreme success of Nick of Time, Luck of the Draw and Longing In Their Hearts required Raitt to tour heavily, and so she took some time off after many intensive years of recording them and then touring in support of them. She had more than earned the right to rest on her laurels. She did not release another album until 1998’s Fundamental. Her choice of producer was the team of Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake, known for their somewhat avantgarde approach. Pairing with those two marked her ﬁrst switch from a producer after four albums with Don Was; she was ready for a change and liked what the pair had done with recording Los Lobos and Sheryl Crow. In the track “The Fundamental Things,” Raitt declares, over jagged bluesy riffs, that she wants to “get back to the fundamental things/let’s get back to the elements of style.” She does just that on the ﬁrst track—establishing a starting point— and then over the next ten songs things get loose, open, and show occasional aural embellishments that Froom and Blake are known for. “Round and Round” feels earthy; on “Spit of Love” the guitar gets a delay, but she even dips into reggae with “I’m On Your Side.” Finally, she ends with a Raitt chestnut, “One Belief Away,” in which she says “the more I try to reach you/the more you slipped away.” The song became the record’s most successful single, peaking at number ﬁfteen on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart. It is difﬁcult to not read into Raitt’s lyrics on “One Belief Away,” and elsewhere, because in November 1999, Raitt and O’Keefe announced they were divorcing after a few months of separation. In an interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 2002, after her next album, Silver Lining, was released Raitt was still upbeat, saying “I never

Bonnie Raitt

367

expected that your 50s would be this cool” (Graff 2002). Fresh on the heels of being inducted into the This is the best time of my Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000 and the success life. I accomplished a lot with of the 1990s behind her, she told reporter Gary Graff my political activism, I wrote that she felt reenergized. “This is like being 22 again. some cool songs, I won a I’m more committed than I have been in the past. And bunch of Grammys, I finally even with all the frightening and challenging times had a hit record, and I got after 9/11, instead of being negative, I’m really opti- into the Rock and Roll Hall mistic that something good is going to happen” (Graff of Fame. 2002). Raitt was surprised by her induction, too, and had ﬁgured she’d have to wait twenty years to be inducted—it did not quite feel real to her (Gundersen 2000). Silver Lining, released in 2002, also features production from Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake. This time Raitt used the good will she had earned (and the chart position—it peaked at seventeen on the Billboard 200) and rapport the three had developed on Fundamental to start to call more of the shots herself. Much of Silver Lining treads familiar Raitt territory, from the polished pop of “I Can’t Help You Now” to the sexy “Gnawin’ on It” and the bluesy “No Gettin’ Over You” and “Fool’s Game.” Some new sounds however, creep into this record, speciﬁcally the inﬂuence of African rhythms— perhaps stemming from her once-upon-a-time major of African studies at Radcliffe University. She brought in musician Habib Koite (from Mali) and some of his band Bambada for “Back Around” and Oliver Mtukudzi of Zimbabwe for “Hear Me Lord.” The album’s cohesive musicianship can be attributed to the fact that her touring band is featured. The record fared well, peaking at thirteen on the Billboard 200 and seventeen on the Top Internet Albums chart, whereas two singles, “Silver Lining” and “Time of Our Lives” peaked at twenty-one and twenty-seven on the Adult Contemporary chart. In between the releases of Silver Lining and her next album, 2005’s Souls Alike, she spent a lot of time wrapped up in family illnesses. Her father passed away in early 2005 after a prolonged illness; her mother had died unexpectedly a few months earlier from complications of Alzheimer’s disease. At the same time her older brother had brain cancer, and Raitt was supporting him. “When there was time to go and listen to more songs for my record, it was a welcome relief,” she said (Bonnie Raitt ofﬁcial Web site). Still, she found time to tour with Jackson Browne and blues singer Keb Mo’ as part of “Vote for Change,” the tour that raised awareness and motivated fans to register to vote in the months leading up to the 2004 presidential election. Raitt continues to work steadily and tour, and she has lent her voice and her considerable guitar talents to the albums of other up-and-coming artists, such as Celtic singer Eliza Gilkyson and Holly Near. Raitt also lent her voice to the character of Trixie in the Disney ﬁlm The Country Bears in 2002. She has appeared on several noteworthy compilations, including the Grammywinning Genius Loves Company, the last album Ray Charles recorded in his

368

Women Icons of Popular Music

career. Raitt sings a duet with him “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind.” In 2005, she released her ﬁrst self-produced album, Souls Alike, along with help from engineer Tchad Blake. It was recorded with her regular touring band and features material from new songwriters such as Maia Sharp and David Batteau. She described the album as full of “thorny, adult themes” (Bonnie Raitt ofﬁcial Web site). In 2006, she released the CD/DVD Bonnie Raitt and Friends, which was recorded live and boasts appearances from singers such as Norah Jones, Keb Mo’, Alison Krauss, and Ben Harper. During that time she toured in buses that were powered by biodiesel fuel, and she brought in people to set up tables at concerts highlighting issues such as solar power, ethanol, and wind power, for example. She spent about a year and a half on the road.

MISSION, MOTIVATION, PROCESS Early in her career Raitt became known for her interpretive covers of other blues, folk, and pop standards, but she didn’t pick the winning material that her other contemporary, Linda Ronstadt, had a knack for. She also wrote some of her own material from the beginning, though she was not a consistent songwriter like Joni Mitchell. As Raitt got older, it became easier for her to write. During those years, Raitt said she felt bad about everything—about the fact that blues music was not appreciated and that nuclear power could not be stopped. Furthermore, she would apologize to songwriters whose tunes she covered. “I would apologize to them for giving me their songs and say, ‘Sorry it didn’t go higher on the charts. Next time, have Linda Ronstadt cover it’ ” (Morse 1989). But the 1970s and 1980s weren’t all just one big apology after another. Through her work with many different producers, Raitt learned a few things about singing. When she worked with Rob Franconi for Green Light, for example, he offered some sound advice on how to approach phrasing. “I would want to bend a lot of notes and improvise new melodies right away, and Rob told me I should sing the songs straight, state the melodies pretty much the way they were written before I jumped off into improvising. I never let anyone tell me how to sing before, but I realized he was right” (Palmer 1982). During the recording of this album she said it was the ﬁrst time she did not feel as though she had to overthink her decisions. She decided there would be no overdubs and no synthesizers, for example; the goal was to capture the feel of a bunch of people enjoying the process of playing rock and roll. Green Light was a turning point, even though shortly after its release Warner Brothers dropped her. Her next signiﬁcant album, Nick of Time, was a landmark release for many reasons, and in many ways its genesis is a classic story in the music business. Life disappointments get channeled into songwriting, songwriter hits rock bottom with her life and breaks away from substance abuse. “I was heartbroken,” Raitt said. “The political thing didn’t

Bonnie Raitt

work out—I didn’t save the world. . . . I had problems in my personal life. I lost a sense of myself and let partying take over and numb the pain I was feeling” (Givens 1989). She joined Alcoholics Anonymous and after becoming sober and losing weight felt renewed. And when she sat down to record Nick of Time, she did not have much pressure from Capitol, her new label, so she decided to keep the music simple, honest, and direct. At the time, Raitt cited the success of artists such as Tracy Chapman and Suzanne Vega as evidence that perhaps the audience was ready for thoughtful, substantive music that was not afraid to blend genres. She was right. She did not have to apologize for anything anymore, either. When Don Was came into the picture for Nick of Time, he was not yet a seasoned producer. He had the task of ﬁnding good songs, smart arrangements that showcased her slide guitar talent and her warm voice, and let the rest take care of itself; her natural afﬁnity for blues-based music would guide her. Here, she wrote two originals and offered her interpretations on many others. Overall, the material was stronger than usual, and the songs she wrote offer some insight into what she was thinking about during the album’s creation. The title song addresses aging, biological clocks, and ﬁnally, love. No woman had really tackled the topic of aging especially in such a matter-of-fact way in pop music. She sings of noticing her parents getting older and how strange it makes them feel. She remarks, “No matter how you tell yourself it’s what we all go through/Those lines are pretty hard to take when they’re starin’ back at you.” The song also honestly tackles the question of having children. Raitt told The Oregonian, “I know lots of women at this particular time in their lives who are trying to ﬁgure out whether they want to have children. And if they want to have more than one, they better get moving. Some of their men are not ready to have children, but you can’t just wait around. You have to make a very real decision” (Morse 1989). At the end of the song, she offers a hopeful yet somewhat ambiguous turn, saying she found love in the “nick of time.” She insisted to reporters who questioned her that she was not directly referencing someone in her life. Writing in the New York Times, Stephen Holden concluded that it was more likely she was referring to the love she found for herself, her improved self-esteem. “And listening to ‘Nick of Time’ one can hear the increased solidity and strength of her singing and sense that at last she has become in her own mind someone close in spirit to the independent, self-determining personal she projects in concert and on records” (Holden 1990). She told another reporter that “I really feel like some angels have been carrying more around. . . . I just have more focus and more discipline, and consequently, more self-respect. And that really feels great” (Hencke 1990). She told Rolling Stone that she felt like she had “a commission. I feel like I have responsibility to continue to write songs. I feel like someone handed me the rest of my life” (Hencke 1992). The rest of the album contains ideas and songs that came from nowhere else but hard-won experience. Raitt told Rolling Stone that she had the song

369

370

Women Icons of Popular Music

“I Ain’t Gonna Let You Break My Heart Again” for eleven years but that she could not sing it until she really meant it, which she did on Nick of Time. “Every song on there is about somebody who had to have lived this long” (Hencke 1992). Experience worked its way into her songwriting, ﬁnally, when it was time to write the material for Longing In Their Hearts, her 1994 release. Things had changed. Previously, she acknowledged she had never felt the calling to be a songwriter. “People kind of do that when they feel the need to express themselves. And part of what changed is that I had something else to say. Also, I wasn’t ﬁnding as many songs that were cutting deep enough into what I wanted to say” (Sculley 1994). By 1995 she had sold millions of records, but despite whatever stability, acceptance, and success those milestones might have suggested, Raitt still refused to call herself a mainstream artist, even after she had received seven Grammys and three of her albums had gone platinum. Raitt views herself as part of the counterculture because of the ideas that drive her personally and professionally. “I don’t consider my personal politics as widely accepted. . . . I don’t think great masses of people are familiar with everything about me. . . . In the ’70s the counterculture was the mainstream. Now, we’re back on the fringes” (McShane 1995). She split from her husband after Fundamental’s release in 1998 but resisted the claim that her own experience with relationships ever directly worked its way into her songwriting. Instead, she said that during her entire career she’s been singing about breaking up and falling in love—that these are universal themes.

LEGACY AND OTHER INTERESTS Growing up as a Quaker inﬂuenced Raitt’s sense of the world and gave her a strong but not overly moralistic sense of right and wrong. Early in her career, Raitt took an activist’s approach. “From the time I was a kid, I wanted to do something for the good of other people. I mean injustice really pisses me off. War and injustice are the things that caused me the most anger and crying in my life,” she told Rolling Stone in 1992 (Hencke 1992). Other causes grabbed her attention over time; the ﬁrst signiﬁcant one came in 1979, when she cofounded MUSE (Musicians United for Safe Energy) (see sidebar). Throughout her career Raitt has likely played dozens of beneﬁt concerts for causes ranging from Farm Aid to Honor the Earth to homelessness and apartheid. Raitt has also been involved with the organizations Bread and Roses and the Boys and Girls Club Guitar program, along with Songbird Foundation, Afropop Worldwide, Musicians Assistance Association, and perhaps most notably Rhythm and Blues Foundation. In the late 1980s, Raitt began to serve on the board of Rhythm and Blues Foundation, which was started by singer Ruth Brown with Raitt’s help and

Bonnie Raitt

Bonnie Raitt Brings Back the Benefit Concert Originally advertised as “The MUSE Concerts for A Non-Nuclear Future,” September 1979’s No Nukes brought together eco-minded activists and rock fans interested in establishing a solar-powered future for American energy production. Attendees of the events, characterized by five days of speeches and music, and a rally of 200,000 at Manhattan’s Battery Park City Landfill, were seemingly united by the goals of Bonnie Raitt and fellow celebrities: a total phase-out of all nuclear reactors in the United States. The partial meltdown of one reactor at a Pennsylvania nuclear facility in March 1979 (known as the Three Mile Island incident) spawned the formation of Musicians for Safe Energy (MUSE). Unlike other antinuclear groups, such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, MUSE based its public influence on the powers of celebrity. In addition to Raitt, the board also consisted of Jackson Browne, John Hall, and Graham Nash. With one free and four ticketed concerts, organizers expected to net close to $1 million for grassroots antinuclear organizations and pro-solar educational campaigns, but even with the expectedly high turnout they didn’t come close to reaching that goal. The young, idealistic crowd gave the MUSE Concerts the vibe of Woodstock with appearances from top acts of the day including Browne, Springsteen, and Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Hardly any of the songs discussed nuclear issues, and artists appeared to be lending their celebrity, but it was not clear how. For Raitt, the event brought attention to an issue she felt passionate about and she hoped to reaffirm the “benefit” in the term “benefit concert.” Although MUSE has since disbanded, concerts such as Live Aid (1985), Farm Aid (1985), and Live Earth (2007) have involved dozens of musicians and have successfully tackled issues such as famine relief, American farms, and the environment, respectively.

dedicated to establishing an R&B archive, museum, funding, and recognition to artists of the genre. Based in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, the organization selects a handful of musicians each year and awards grants based on merit, which helps pay for hospitals, funerals, and living expenses. Brown started the organization after her own career started to decline and she had a hard time making ends meet after she left Atlantic and went on to other labels. The organization also lobbies for royalty reform and retroactive compensation for artists who were perhaps not given their due (Shiels 2007). Sadly, the story of roots (and even pop) music in general is full of cases where artists who were African American and/or poor were not dealt a fair hand; contracts and other protections were not customarily issued.

371

372

Women Icons of Popular Music

As her work with MUSE attests, Raitt has long been interested in energy consumption and environmental preservation movement. On her summer 2002 tour, she started something called Green Highway, which is described on her Web site as a “traveling eco-village providing information to concertgoers about alternative energy solutions,” along with displays of hybrid vehicles and information tables by local grassroots environmental organizations. In October 2004, she co-headlined the Vote for Change tour with longtime musical friend Jackson Browne, and one of the tour’s goals was to ﬁght for change to America’s energy policy and raise awareness of the issue across the country, but especially in swing states, leading up to the presidential election. Today, the warmth and spirit of Raitt has left an indelible mark on the rest of the music world. The multiplatinum artist Sheryl Crow walks in the footsteps Raitt trail blazed along with the likes of Joan Osbourne, Melissa Etheridge, and the young rising star Joss Stone. Raitt’s ability to achieve fame after nearly two decades of recording gives hope to artists who struggle for years as well. SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Bonnie Raitt. Warner Bros., 1971 Give it Up. Warner Bros., 1972 Sweet Forgiveness. Warner Bros., 1977 Nick of Time. Capitol, 1989 The Bonnie Raitt Collection. Warner Bros., 1990 Luck of the Draw. Capitol, 1991 Longing in their Hearts. Capitol, 1994 Road Tested (Live). Capitol, 1995 Fundamental. Capitol, 1998 Souls Alike. Capitol, 2005

FURTHER READING Bego, Mark. Bonnie Raitt: Still in the Nick of Time. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002. Fong-Torres, Ben. “Bonnie Raitt: Daughter of the Blues.” Rolling Stone 202 (December 18, 1975). Gaar, Gillian. She’s a Rebel: The History of Women in Rock and Roll Seattle, WA: Seal Press/Avalon, 2002. Gardner, Elysa. “Luck of the Draw. Review.” Rolling Stone 608/609 (June 17, 1997). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/bonnieraitt/albums/album/217464/ review/5943673/luck_of_the_draw. Givens, Ron. “Getting Back on Track.” Newsweek (March 13, 1989). Graff, Gary. “Raitt Finds Silver Lining in Both Age and Career.” Cleveland Plain Dealer (August 15, 2002).

Bonnie Raitt

Gundersen, Elsa. “ ‘The Best Time’ For Bonnie Raitt: At Age 50, The Eternal Activist is a Hall of Famer.” USA Today (March 8, 2000). Hamel, Chris. “Bonnie Raitt. Album Review.” Rolling Stone 101 (February 3, 1972). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/bonnieraitt/albums/album/203150/ review/6068003/bonnie_raitt. Hencke, James. “Bonnie Raitt Finds Fame In ‘Nick of Time.’ ” St. Louis Post-Dispatch (April 29, 1990). Hencke, James. “Bonnie Raitt.” Rolling Stone 641 (October 15, 1992). Herbst, Peter. “Sweet Forgiveness. Review.” Rolling Stone 239 (May 19, 1977). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/bonnieraitt/albums/album/216874/review/ 6209795/sweet_forgiveness. Holden, Stephen. “Streetlights. Review.” Rolling Stone 173 (November 7, 1974). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/bonnieraitt/albums/album/216878/ review/6067850/streetlights. Holden, Stephen. “Bonnie Raitt Captures the Heart of Her Generation.” New York Times (March 25, 1990). Juarez, Vanessa. “Sexy Woman With the Guitar: After Four Decades, Singer Bonnie Raitt Is Still On the Road Making Music and Speaking her Mind.” Newsweek (December 9, 2005). Landau, Jon. “Give it Up. Review.” Rolling Stone 120 (October 26, 1972). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/bonnieraitt/albums/album/245888/review/ 6067688/give_it_up. Ledbetter, Les. “The Pop Life: The New Sly Album: Music Feels Good.” New York Times (April 20, 1973). McShane, Larry. “First Raitt!; But Not Mainstream.” Toronto Sun (February 24, 1995). Morse, Steve. “Just One Term for Her: First-Raitt Bonnie Raitt Puts Her Woes Behind and Roars Ahead.” The Oregonian (July 14, 1989). Raitt, Bonnie. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. See www.bonnieraitt.com. Rockwell, John. “The Fragile Charm of Bonnie Raitt.” New York Times (April 13, 1973). Sculley, Alan. “Luck of the Draw: Bonnie Raitt Comes Up A Big Winner.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch (August 21, 1994). Shewey, Don. “Green Light. Review.” Rolling Stone 367 (April 15, 1982). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/bonnieraitt/albums/album/107013/review/ 6067633/green_light. Shiels, Rosa. “Rhythm and Green.” The Press, Christchurch, New Zealand (March 31, 2007).

373

Courtesy of Photofest

Linda Ronstadt

376

Women Icons of Popular Music

OVERVIEW Along with peers Joni Mitchell, Carole King, and Carly Simon, Linda Ronstadt’s music and career started to take shape during a key part of the 1970s singer/songwriter movement that emerged from the Los Angeles–area folkrock scene. But Ronstadt distinguishes herself because her career has undergone a sonic metamorphosis over the years that few other artists of her caliber can rival. Her versatility as a singer—for which she is mostly known—and her skills as a faithful, sentimental interpreter have enabled her to make a mark on a number of genres, from country to folk to rock to new wave to Latin music to ﬁnally what can be described as adult contemporary. From her early days performing in California with members of the country-rock band the Eagles, before their ofﬁcial formation, to her work exploring her Latin heritage by singing in Spanish, Ronstadt, with her clear, strong powerful voice, has left a mark on many genres, including jazz vocals. Her trademark embrace of multiple genres of music is a choice that has paid off with international fame and a career that has spanned four decades. Although these metamorphoses on ﬁrst glance might suggest a lack of focus or invite opportunities for inconsistencies, through each project Ronstadt remains a powerful, expressive singer. Ronstadt continues to produce worthwhile musical projects to this day because she has followed the song and followed the music; she has not necessarily always followed trends. After so much early success in the 1970s, Ronstadt retooled her career in the early 1980s and recorded a series of albums on which she interpreted jazz, pop, and vocal standards by Irving Berlin, Billy Strayhorn, and Duke Ellington set to the arrangements of Nelson Riddle, most noted for his work with Frank Sinatra. On these three albums, What’s New, Lush Life, and For Sentimental Reasons, she proved to be a vocalist who does not impose an overwhelming style by stretching the phrases or otherwise distorting the melody. Although she sings the song the way it was written, Ronstadt’s voice is unmistakable. Biographer Mark Bego praised her versatility as a vocalist, believing her peerless among her contemporaries. Part of her appeal, too, is the fact that she is a female artist whose work interests both men and women. Ronstadt emerged during a time in history when popular culture was starting to show the ways in which strong, smart women were beginning to see the social limitations of the women’s liberation movement and the second wave of feminism; women may have been permitted some of the same jobs, tasks, or expectations as men, but they were still women and still at times encountering resistance. Many male rock critics and writers consistently described her as beautiful during her early years of her career, an adjective that does not necessarily make a woman seem approachable or even human. But Ronstadt, however, seemed different: self-effacing, unthreatening, down-to-earth, and good-humored. Writer Gerri Hirshey asserted that Ronstadt was a “poster girl for [a] well-adjusted, moderate feminist” (Hirshey 2001). Hirshey described the self-declared introvert as “alternately

Linda Ronstadt

tough and kittenish.” Ronstadt may have become a bit of a sex symbol, but it was not necessarily an image she shrewdly, consciously cultivated. Some journalists have called her the ﬁrst pop sex symbol, but Ronstadt is a serious person, someone with a strong interest in reading, for example, who resists the image that is often foisted on her. Part of it is a result of the media machine, but part of the sex-symbol image stems from the fact that Ronstadt never married (she adopted two children in the early 1990s), which may have created the impression of a liberated woman—one with lots of famous boyfriends, which was partly true. Even in terms of her public perception, music notwithstanding, Ronstadt resists facile classiﬁcation. Despite her success, Ronstadt has at times suffered from self-doubt, selfcriticism, and self-consciousness about her weight, her appearance, and her voice. She once claimed that she never listened to her own records; she would rather listen to someone else. She has also claimed that she would never give up singing for a boyfriend, even though she described herself growing up as “boy-crazy.” Throughout her career, Ronstadt has collaborated with and/or been inﬂuenced by many artists, including members of the Eagles, James Taylor, Warren Zevon, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Ruben Blades, Karla Bonoff, Phillip Glass, James Ingram, Bonnie Raitt, Randy Newman, Chuck Berry, Mick Jagger, Peter Asher, and Paul Simon. With Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris, two other signiﬁcant country singers, Ronstadt formed one-third of the group Trio, a short-lived but critically beloved group that released two albums, the ﬁrst in 1988 and the second in 1997. Ronstadt also released a critically acclaimed album with Harris in 1999 called Western Wall: The Tucson Sessions, a collection of covers and originals that is a testament to their vocal talent and their enduring friendship. Linda Ronstadt’s Grammy Awards truly span the gamut of her career’s many turns. She has been nominated for seventeen Grammy Awards and has won eleven, starting with 1975’s “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still In Love With You),” for which she won Best Female Country Vocal Performance. In 1988 she won Best Mexican-American/Tejano Music Performance for Canciones de mi Padre. Other performances, such as “Don’t Know Much” with Aaron Neville in 1989, earned her a Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals, as did 1990’s “All My Life.” In 1992, Frenesi won Best Tropical Latin Performance, and in 1996, she won Best Musical Album for Children for Dedicated to the One I Love. She even has an Emmy Award and was nominated for a Tony Award and a Golden Globe. On of the release of 2004’s Hummin’ to Myself, Ronstadt has sold 60 million records worldwide.

EARLY YEARS Ronstadt grew up the third of four children in Tucson, Arizona. As a child, she learned how to hunt and ride horses. Her mother, Ruthmary Copeman,

377

378

Women Icons of Popular Music

was originally from Michigan and met her father, Gilbert Ronstadt, while they were in college in Tucson. Ronstadt’s background is German, Dutch, English, and Mexican. Her maternal grandfather was a famous inventor—her family had been wealthy for generations—and her paternal grandfather was a rancher and also a self-taught musician who had written arrangements of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance. As with many children growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s, radio ﬁgured prominently in her musical education, but her family’s musical interests exposed Ronstadt to many types of music. Her father would sing traditional Mexican songs to her and her siblings when she was growing up, and her aunt Luisa Ronstadt performed folk songs, which helped foster her interest in Mexican music. Not only would she listen to the family’s Peggy Lee, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald records, but her sister Suzi’s record collection of the country heartbreak Hank Williams also grabbed her attention. Her eclectic taste was formed at an early age. “My family loves music. My aunts and mother loved opera. My father, who did a lot of business in Mexico, brought back Mexican music and my grandpa and aunts would sit at the piano and all sing the arias from the operas they loved. My brother was in a boy choir, and we also listened to the radio. There were a lot of country and rock songs playing, and we got to hear some rhythm and blues that were broadcast from those high-powered towers in the South. So it was like a big melting pot of music that I heard growing up” (Iwasaki 2007). Still, she acknowledged that the records of Mexican folk singer Lola Beltrán, above all others, had a formative inﬂuence on the development of her own budding talent. Ronstadt, as part of a thoroughly musical family, formed a singing trio with her sister Suzi and brother Mike called the New Union Ramblers. They met a local musician, Bob Kimmel, who joined the group as their bassist. Participating in the band gave her early exposure to the world of performing and an early opportunity to deal with her pre-performance stage jitters. Music also gave her a safe haven during the universally painful time of adolescence. Ronstadt went to a strict Catholic school through eighth grade. However, she went to a public high school where she felt that she did not ﬁt in; many of her female classmates were interested in either getting married or going into the convent. Ronstadt wanted neither. Music, however, kept her going and kept her sane, and she explained how her diverse background and strong family made her unique. She said she would like to sing like a Mexican person and think like a German. Still, she credited her parents for raising her to become a steady, responsible adult; they set the bar high about how people should behave toward one another. Ronstadt began to seriously contemplate a career in music while she was a student at the University of Arizona. She continued to perform with her siblings at coffeehouses and other small venues in the area, but Kimmel had long since moved to Los Angeles. In her ﬁrst year of college, in late 1964, she decided it was time to follow her dream. She dropped out of school and moved

Linda Ronstadt

to California, as did many aspiring musicians in the 1960s. When she arrived, Ronstadt said that she did not necessarily aim for a solo career or to become the next big thing. Instead, she admired the career of Judy Collins and wanted to sell enough records to support herself and earn the respect and admiration of her peers. Kimmel had joined a group and needed a singer and had Ronstadt in mind for the job. Kimmel introduced her to the guitarist-songwriter Kenny Edwards. The three formed a trio called the Stone Poneys in 1964, with Ronstadt serving as the lead singer, taking their name from a Charley Patton song “The Stone Poney Blues.” Inspired by the singing trio Peter, Paul, and Mary, the Stone Poneys steadily toured the California folk circuit and gained a following. The Troubadour club (and the Los Angeles area in general, see sidebar) was especially important to their development and later to Ronstadt’s solo career as the venue where she met the Eagles, the Byrds, and Jackson Browne, among others. Initially, the Troubadour’s manager Herb Cohen wanted to record her without the group. But Ronstadt was not interested in a solo career: Part of that decision stemmed from the fact that she could not play the guitar very well, and though no one could deny she had a gift for singing, her voice was still a work-in-progress. Before the Stone Poneys released its ﬁrst, self-titled album in 1967 it had temporarily disbanded. Cohen, though, stayed in contact with Ronstadt and eventually helped the trio land on Capitol Records for their debut. Cohen and the album’s producer, Nick Venet, still believed in her solo appeal more so than the trio’s potential for success and included three Ronstadt solo songs for the release. The material was a mix of Edwards and Kimmel originals, traditional folk songs they rearranged, and material Venet found for Ronstadt speciﬁcally, such as “Just a Little Bit of Rain.” The record itself came and went without much of a response because folk trios were starting to fall out of fashion. The year was 1967, and the Beatles had released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a landmark album that led other artists to experiment with psychedelic-sounding embellishments. The Poneys’s second album, however, Evergreen Volume 2, was quickly released within six months of its ﬁrst and contained a slightly more rocking collection of tunes, but ones that still called to mind the music of Peter, Paul, and Mary. It fared much better than the debut and nabbed the group a Top 20 spot with the song “Different Drum,” which was written by Michael Nesmith (of the Monkees). The song was a sleeper hit that was released in summer 1967 but did not peak on the singles chart until the beginning of 1968. However, the band had a hard time staying together. Discouraged by its slow and poor reception from the critics and fans of their live shows, Edwards took off for India. As their one hit song climbed the charts, Kimmel and Ronstadt did some small-scale touring with other musicians and landed an opening slot for the Doors. After the tour ended Kimmel left, and Edwards rejoined for the ﬁnal release, Linda Ronstadt: Stone Poneys and Friends, in

379

380

Women Icons of Popular Music

Hollywood’s Historic Haven: Laurel Canyon New York City has Greenwich Village’s folk music and singer/songwriters, and San Francisco will forever be associated with beatniks, protests, hippies, and psychedelic music. But Los Angeles has been an attractive destination to creative types, especially the Laurel Canyon area in the Hollywood Hills section of the city. Laurel Canyon served as a breeding ground for careers and romances, drug-taking and music-making: From about the mid-1960s through the mid1970s, the area was at one time or another home to the Byrds, the Mamas and the Papas, Linda Ronstadt, Joni Mitchell, Stephen Stills, Carole King, James Taylor, Neil Young, Graham Nash, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Glenn Frey, Don Henley, David Crosby, and Jim Morrison. Budding music mogul David Geffen had a home in the area; Mitchell, inspired by the landscape and the scene, called her 1970 album Ladies of the Canyon; and Frank Zappa died there in 1993. “California Dreamin” by the Mamas and the Papas; “Our House” by Crosby, Stills, and Nash; and “It’s Too Late” by Carole King were all written by artists while they lived there. In his book Hotel California, Barney Hoskyns explained the appeal. Close to downtown and therefore close to gigs, Laurel Canyon is secluded and selfcontained; many side streets are dead-ends. It is a slice of Eden and a respite from the ugly machinations of nearby Hollywood and the music industry. But by the end of the 1970s, drugs, fame, and hedonism had taken their toll on some of these musicians, but the appeal of the area remains intact, inspiring an album by Jackie DeShannon (1969) and a 2002 film in which Frances McDormand plays a hippie throwback record producer. Actors, actresses, musicians, and other industry types who seek an escape from the pressures and the photographers still seek it out.

April 1968. It failed to signiﬁcantly connect with audiences and did not yield a hit single. The group disbanded, but Ronstadt was required to serve the seven-year contract she had signed with Capitol. All along, getting her to sign with Capitol as part of the trio was really a ploy by the label to ease her into a solo career. It happened perhaps much faster than she was ready for; all this attention at the young age of twenty-one came as a bit of a surprise to Ronstadt.

CAREER PATH Although she loved music and loved to sing, being a solo artist was not necessarily something she had envisioned for herself. But she was stuck. Ronstadt could not afford to waste much time because of her ﬁnancial obligations to

Linda Ronstadt

381

Capitol. Her ﬁrst two solo albums, Hand Sown Home Grown (1969) and Silk Purse (1970), showcase her They haven’t invented a word country roots but still hint at her yearning for a rock- for the loneliness that everyand-roll audience. Hand Sown featured backing body goes through on the vocals from her brothers and some songs written by road. Edwards and then-boyfriend Tom Campbell. It was produced by Chip Douglas, who had worked extensively with the Monkees and written “Different Drum.” The album was not a signiﬁcant success with audiences. The material on Silk Purse was more heavily dominated by country music and was even recorded in Nashville. The album earned her a Grammy Award nomination, and the tune “Long, Long Time” made it into the top thirty. With this hit, she appeared at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, on television’s The Johnny Cash Show, and on a Glen Campbell special. Even though the music community during the early 1970s of which she was a part was a tight-knit yet ﬂuid group, her career during this time suffered from changes in managers, producers, and back-up musicians. But Ronstadt found solace developing good relationships with like-minded artists and spent a lot of time forming a community with other burgeoning songwriters such as Maria Muldaur and Jackson Browne. During these formative years of her career, Ronstadt was lucky because the landscape of music would beneﬁt artists like her with eclectic taste. For example, when Ronstadt was set to record her third album, Carole King’s album Tapestry recently had become a phenomenal success, making it easier for other women to ably combine rock and roll, pop, country, and folk in their music. Glen Frey, Don Henley, Bernie Leadon, and Randy Meisner, prior to their incarnation as the four original members of the Eagles, played on her third, self-titled album released in 1972. Producer (and boyfriend) John Boylan was at the helm of this record, which featured a few live performances of her at the Troubadour. Some of the selections—covers of Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, and Woody Guthrie songs— helped establish a cult following, and one song, a take on Jackson Browne’s “Rock Me on the Water,” went to eighty-ﬁve on the charts. The album caught the attention of David Geffen, president of Asylum Records, which was home to Jackson Browne. Eventually, she landed on Asylum, but the road there was fraught with difﬁculty. By the end of 1972, she had lost the backup band she worked so hard to assemble. Frey, Henley, Leadon, and Meisner formed the Eagles when Asylum fell in love with them and released their debut album shortly thereafter. She was in debt because her albums had not sold enough, and Cohen and producer John Boylan were taking money off the top for their commissions. Neither the production values nor the material on her albums offered the best showcase of her talent, and her stage fright and timidity did little to convince audiences of her capabilities. Don’t Cry Now, her next album and her ﬁrst for Asylum, languished in the works for more than a year, with $150,000 in

382

Women Icons of Popular Music

expenses and the involvement of three producers. Ronstadt took off some time to open for Neil Young on his tour. Over the next couple of years Ronstadt was torn between two labels and two producer-boyfriends—John Boylan followed by J.D. Souther, who took on various duties as producer and manager—making things uncomfortable at times in the studio. It took the intervention of Peter Asher, who was part of the British group Peter and Gordon and manager for James Taylor, to change things around for the better by taking the reins of Don’t Cry Now. When the record was released in 1973, it was not a huge hit, but it was strong enough for Capitol to release a collection of her early songs under the title of Different Drum. Ronstadt had difﬁculty trusting her previous producers and managers, but with Asher, who was a professional who knew what he was doing, it was different. The recording process became enjoyable, Asher treated her like an equal, and she began to trust him. The resulting Don’t Cry Now was a better product all around; her voice sounded improved, and Ronstadt realized that it was up to her to become a success. The album went to forty-ﬁve on the pop chart, and Stephen Holden in Rolling Stone said the record displayed “Linda’s supreme vocals in a ﬁne production setting” (Holden 1973). By the time Heart Like a Wheel arrived in late 1974, Ronstadt had already made a name for herself and recorded albums for about half a dozen years. She had opened for high proﬁle artists Jackson Browne and Neil Young during their tours. Her efforts at combining country and rock in previous releases came together seamlessly in Heart Like a Wheel. The album blended country, folk, and rock into something that seemed more like the work of an artist who was coming into her own rather than a haphazard attempt to try out all three. It is also the album that broadened her audience considerably, because Heart reached success on both the country and pop charts. Some critics have called this the original alt-country album, in reference to and pre-dating a hybrid genre that emerged in the mid-1990s. Each of the ten songs she and producer Peter Asher picked served her well. Heart went to number one, sold 2 million copies, and made her a bona ﬁde star. The arrangements and musicianship are never overpowering. Conﬁdent, she starts off with the bluesy “You’re No Good” and belts it out so convincingly that the song went to number one on the pop chart. Stephen Holden remarked that the song “displays Ronstadt’s enormous potential as a white blues singer” (Holden 1975). “Faithless Love,” a ballad written by J.D. Souther, is ﬂecked with a banjo. The upbeat country-rock “When Will I Be Loved” hit number one on the country chart and number two on the pop chart. A roots-based album would not be complete without a Hank Williams song: Ronstadt dips into honky-tonk territory with “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love With You).” Her rendering shows her ability to stay true to the material yet add her own subtleties. The song went to number two on the country charts and also earned Ronstadt her ﬁrst Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance.

Linda Ronstadt

The album marks her ﬁrst foray with a number of musicians who would become important throughout her career, such as singer/songwriter and guitarist Andrew Gold and engineer George Massenburg. “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love With You)” featured harmonizing guest vocals from her friend Emmylou Harris, whom Ronstadt brought to the attention of record labels in the early 1970s and whose career Ronstadt championed. Another vocal duet, this time with Maria Muldaur, enhanced the album’s title track, written by Anna McGarrigle. Arranged with piano, double bass, cello, viola, and ﬁddle, Holden called it a masterpiece. The lyrics drive at the album’s core ideas: the power of love to both break you down and build you up. The album enabled her to ﬁnally get out of debt and buy a house in Malibu. But, as a proclaimed overnight success, she was still wracked with selfconﬁdence issues and felt self-conscious and undeserving of her success. She was unhappy and told Rolling Stone writer Ben Fong-Torres that she felt no connection with her audience and found it difﬁcult to concentrate. So she sought the help of a psychiatrist to help her through her anxiety during this rough period, regain her focus, and develop some peace with her place in the universe. She also discovered that running provided some solace and some natural endorphin boosts. She quickly followed the release of Heart with 1975’s Prisoner in Disguise, which went gold within a month of its release. Ronstadt sang Neil Young’s “Love Is a Rose,” and James Taylor’s “Hey Mister, That’s Me Up On the Jukebox,” as well as songs by Anna McGarrigle and J.D. Souther. Two of the album’s most notable hits came from Martha and the Vandellas’s “Heat Wave,” and the Smokey Robinson and the Miracles song “Tracks of My Tears.” Both songs became Top 20 hits for Ronstadt, despite the fact that Rolling Stone writer Dave Marsh said that they did not suit her “trembling, country-inﬂected soprano” and urged her producer and arranger to take Ronstadt in a new direction (Marsh 1975). The selections on Prisoner show Ronstadt’s trademark far-reaching musical taste. During the recording of Prisoner, Harris, who made another appearance, and Ronstadt discovered that they shared a love of Dolly Parton. Both artists had covered one of Parton’s songs but the three of them, despite their interest in country music, could not be more different as song stylists. Ronstadt continued to be proliﬁc through the rest of the 1970s. She released Hasten Down the Wind in 1976, which had a few misﬁres. Critics took issue with some of her selections and the treatment of those selections, though one pronounced that it was, despite its ﬂaws, a ﬁne album that begged closer inspection. She includes three songs by Karla Bonoff, an artist whose career Ronstadt helped foster. The album’s cover image, with Ronstadt wearing a strapless, lightweight dress, walking on a beach, fostered the image of sex symbol. Hasten fared better than its predecessor by hitting the gold mark in the same month of its release, going platinum just two months later, and yielding three Top 10 hits. It garnered Ronstadt a Grammy Award for Best Female

383

384

Women Icons of Popular Music

Pop Performance and was declared one of the best albums of the year by Time magazine. In December 1976, Asylum released her Greatest Hits album, which by January was a smash platinum hit. The next studio album, Simple Dreams, added some heft with the help of a supporting band that was more rock-oriented (some members of which were brought to her by Kenny Edwards). The 1977 album became her biggest hit thus far and stayed atop the charts for ﬁve weeks, selling 3 million copies. She ably tackles the Rolling Stones (“Tumbling Dice”) and includes two songs from the then little-known songwriter and singer Warren Zevon (“Poor Poor Pitiful Me” and “Carmelita”). The torchy Roy Orbison ballad “Blue Bayou” is another of her own selections, and “It’s So Easy” is a simple, somewhat corny but catchy song. Both became top ﬁve hits and Ronstadt even went so far as to record a Spanish version of “Blue Bayou,” with translation help from her father. Critics praised the album, and one of the hard-to-please writers at Rolling Stone, Peter Herbst, declared in the ﬁrst line of his review, “[T]he thing about Linda Ronstadt is that she keeps getting better and we keep expecting more and more of her” (Herbst 1978). In the late 1970s and into the early 1980s especially, popular music started to trend more toward new wave, which meant more synthesizers. Living in the U.S.A. (1978) had album art that seemed to celebrate America du jour, with Ronstadt wearing shorts and roller skates and munching on potato chips. Ronstadt even took on the Elvis Costello ballad “Alison.” Living went to number one, but the album, like the one that would come after it, was met with mixed reviews from critics. Although some critics embraced Ronstadt’s singing, others felt as if she were trying too hard to be technically perfect. Pop music should be more about having fun and feeling good, which was something that she seemed to be missing. The subtle synthesizer dabblings from Living were more pronounced in the next release, Mad Love, where she continued to offer her interpretations on Elvis Costello’s burgeoning oeuvre. The material situates itself somewhere between rock and roll and new wave music and addresses, as the title suggests, passion and romantic love. Some creative help came from arranger/guitarist Mark Goldenberg of the Cretones, who wrote three of the songs. Perhaps Mad Love’s approach was not the best or most natural match for Ronstadt, who comes across as downright strident on a few tracks. Rolling Stone writer Stephen Holden put it this way: “No matter how tough she acts, she can’t help sounding pretty” (Holden 1980). He also ﬂaws the recording for its overt meticulousness. Still, it was a commercial success and yielded several hit singles, including “Hurt So Bad.” At the time, Ronstadt and Asher were ready for a different sound. The Next Phase: Broadway, Popular Standards, and Spanish Music What does an artist do when she wants to do something different yet remain true to herself and reinvigorate her career? If you’re blessed with the talents of

Linda Ronstadt

Linda Ronstadt, you move from Los Angeles to New York and get involved in the city’s musical theater scene. In 1980, Ronstadt starred as Mabel in Joseph Papp’s bawdy, boisterous production of The Pirates of Penzance, as part of the New York Shakespeare in the Park Festival. The production, and Ronstadt along with it, moved to Broadway the next year. The role was a challenge for Ronstadt, who had little acting experience and struggled to obscure her Arizona accent. Technically speaking, she needed to perform as a coloratura soprano and sing in a much higher register than that to which she was accustomed. Her solution was to take voice lessons. The New York Times said that “Miss Ronstadt has little to say and much to sing, which is all to the good. She calls on the most operatic resources of her strong voice, creating a reasonably consistent and generally winning vocal impression” (Sterritt 1980). Ronstadt appeared with most of the Broadway cast again in the movie version several years later in 1983. In the Broadway version of Pirates, she even wound up singing the same song she had sung as a child in a production of a different Gilbert and Sullivan show, “Sorry Her Lot.” She also performed in a pop version of the Puccini opera La Boheme, also with Papp, to which opera purists and many theater critics mostly objected. Ronstadt wanted to tackle something different, and the Pirates role gave her a boost of conﬁdence. Her vocal training and long-term performance in Pirates seemed to have helped her vocal skills, and it set her career off in a different direction for the 1980s. Ronstadt’s 1982 album Get Closer shows off a singer more at ease with her talent, prompting Ken Tucker to conclude that Ronstadt was no longer overly constrained by attention to technique but other critics to note that she seemed to have lost touch with mainstream pop. Remarkably, Get Closer was her ﬁrst release since Heart Like a Wheel that failed to achieve platinum status. But working on Broadway did more than help her comfort level with singing: It set the stage for her ﬁrst formal recording foray into American standards and classics, a genre that occupied a good portion of the decade. After Pirates, she tried recording some of her favorite standards but disliked the result. Finally a meeting was set with arranger Nelson Riddle, renowned for his work with Frank Sinatra and other vocalists. Riddle wanted to do an entire album with her, not just a few tracks, which resulted in the 1983 album What’s New? The critical response seemed mixed and somewhat confused, but critical response, historically, did not seem to sway her fans away from buying her records. What’s New? hit number three and went triple platinum. The selection of material and the use of a full orchestra instead of a small band provided her voice with a new sonic backdrop. Although working with an orchestra was something new for Ronstadt, the music stayed light and ﬂuid, her voice sweet and pure. According to Stephen Holden of the New York Times, their approach was loosely modeled after Frank Sinatra’s Only the Lonely, which he recorded with Riddle. The material includes the Gershwin tune “Someone to Watch Over Me” and “I’ve Got a Crush on You.” Her interpretation of “Crazy He

385

386

Women Icons of Popular Music

Calls Me” will not usurp that of Billie Holiday’s rendering, but does illustrate that she is more relaxed and less a slave to technical perfection. Although Ronstadt is certainly not the ﬁrst vocalist to tackle this material, it initially seems like an unusual move for someone who emerged out of country rock to wholeheartedly embrace and succeed at a very different genre. Devoting oneself to grown-up music, though, is a grown-up move and the sign of an artist who is perhaps ready for a different milieu. But overall, the shift is not entirely unpredictable, considering the array of music she grew up with as a child. In terms of its broader cultural context, Ronstadt’s turn toward American standards predates the general fascination with the canon that would emerge in the late 1990s and through the subsequent decade. For Ronstadt, What’s New? signaled the arrival of a thematically uniﬁed album, an approach with which she has attempted to stick. She continued working with Riddle for her subsequent release Lush Life, in 1984, which featured takes on “You Took Advantage of Me” and “It Never Entered My Mind.” The critical response was good, but one critic thought there were misguided attempts at songs such as “Sophisticated Lady” and “Skylark,” among others. Continuing in the same vein, she released For Sentimental Reasons in 1986, with many other familiar tunes such as “My Funny Valentine,” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” and “Straighten Up and Fly Right.” Ronstadt said that even years later, she is still proud of those records and the complexity of the selections, which work very well with a symphony. About working with Riddle, she said, “Nelson was one of the guys who really, legitimately interpreted jazz to an orchestra without losing its ﬂavor and authenticity. He knows how to do that without turning things into sugar water” (Bego 1990, 135). Ronstadt was lucky to have worked with him for three albums; Riddle died at age sixty-four in 1985, shortly before For Sentimental Reasons was completed. The three albums were put together as a package and sold as Round Midnight. By the end of the 1980s, Ronstadt would return to the contemporary, adultalbum pop world, but not without continuing to try new things. Never far from ﬁlm and Broadway, she recorded “Somewhere Out There,” which became the theme to the 1987 animated ﬁlm An American Tail with James Ingram. The song became a number two hit. In the late 1980s, she also ﬁnally realized a project whose idea arose from a 1978 meeting but that had never been put into fruition: A collaboration among Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, and Dolly Parton to explore their shared country music roots in an album called Trio. The pairing of the three voices was like a triad made in heaven among the angels. Some of the obstacles that stood in their way for years came from record labels that competed to release it, but also there was the trick of ﬁnding time in the three artist’s busy recording and touring schedules. Ronstadt referred to the experience as musical nirvana. Many critics hailed the effort—it was in the works for nearly a decade—and the record was a crossover hit, peaking at number six on the Billboard 200 and number one on

Linda Ronstadt

the country album chart. It even earned them a Grammy Award for Best Country Performance by a Duo or I like to do what I feel— “follow your bliss.” Group with Vocal. As if that were not enough accomplishments, in 1987 Ronstadt also recorded her ﬁrst album in Spanish, Canciones de Mi Padre (Songs of My Father), which consists of traditional Mexican songs. These were the songs with which she grew up, sometimes described as mariachi music because it includes trumpets, violins, and indigenous Mexican instruments such as vihuela and guitarron, a type of guitar and bass guitar respectively. Inspired by Mexican singer Lola Beltrán, whom she described as a major inﬂuence on her singing, Ronstadt fully immersed herself in learning the speciﬁc vocal techniques that were required (with the assistance of Ruben Fuentes), in addition to pulling off singing in a language in which she was not ﬂuent. Stephen Holden of the New York Times was so moved he remarked that it “may in fact be the most deeply felt album the singer has ever made” (Holden 1987). At times, it certainly seems as if Ronstadt is holding back a heaving sob, such as on “The Laurels.” Her voice is full and robust—beautifully suited toward this type of music, in which the emotional extremes of sadness and joy are expressed with the same amount of vigor. There is little denying the personal nature of the material—the album carries some words of reﬂection from her aunt Luisa Ronstadt, her brothers sang on the record, her father created some of the album art, and its title comes from a collection of songs her aunt put together when Ronstadt was born. “All of my records have been legitimate expressions of my personality, but this is the part of me that incorporates all the facets. It’s the anchor, really” (Swenson 1987). She toured in support of the album with a dramatic, colorful stage set approximating early 1920s Mexico. It fared extremely well in Latin music charts, hitting number one on the regional Mexican chart and four on the Latin albums; Canciones even peaked at forty-two on the Billboard 200, a testament to her popular, perennial appeal. Again, Ronstadt seemed unstoppable—she was awarded a Grammy for Best Mexican-American/Tejano Music Performance. Ronstadt went back to popular form, to some extent, with her 1989 album Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind, produced with Peter Asher. It was recorded at ﬁlmmaker George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch, with a sizable orchestra and gospel choir. The orchestral rock album, which calls to mind Roy Orbison, Phil Spector, or the Beach Boys, had a mix of material from Jimmy Webb and Karla Bonoff, among others, and yielded four duets with Aaron Neville, most notably the ballad “Don’t Know Much,” which hit number two. Bill Barol, writing for Newsweek magazine, believed that the selections were smart and described her singing “as sweet and gusty as ever” (Barol 1989). Ronstadt continued to redeﬁne herself, this time with a slightly more grown-up, dressed-up version of the type of material she recorded in the

387

388

Women Icons of Popular Music

1970s. It was a return, too, to multiplatinum status; Cry Like a Rainstorm sold 2 million copies. More Mexico, Por Favor, and More Standards Ronstadt revisited Mexican ranchera music for 1991’s Mas Canciones, which critic Daisann McLane thought to be too pure and ﬂat an interpretation of such material. This time she failed to produce goosebumps in the listener, which good, melodramatic ranchera music ought to do. Rolling Stone said her phrasing was off and that she could not master the cadence, even going so far as to say it was a problem that went back to her jazz interpretations. The album performed well on the charts, however, and peaked at sixteen on the Latin albums, ﬁve on the regional Mexican chart but only eighty-eight on Billboard 200, suggesting perhaps that popular appeal of this excursion was waning somewhat. She received another Grammy for this album, in the same category as Canciones de mi Padre. Ronstadt made one more foray into Latin music with Frenesi in 1992, which was a result of her work as a performer on the 1992 ﬁlm Mambo Kings. Consequently, the rhythms are more Afro-Cuban than Mexican. It hit number three on the tropical/salsa chart, and seventeen on the Latin chart, but barely dented the Billboard 200 when it peaked at 193. Frenesi’s lack of traction among mainstream pop audiences signaled that perhaps it was time for another change. After these Spanish-language albums, Ronstadt’s recording and touring pace slowed somewhat. The music of the 1990s produced mixed results, commercially and critically. She returned to some tried-and-true favorite forms but with a new producer. There were bound to be some growing pains, even for an established artist, as Winter Light was her ﬁrst pop album not produced in conjunction with Peter Asher. Instead, she opted to produce it herself with help from George Massenburg. Released in 1993, the record did not produce a hit single. However, some critics thought she sounded more open, less polished and processed, and more natural, and one critic said that it was her most personal offering thus far. Two years later, Feels Like Home returned to a stripped-down, country-rock sound. Initially planned as a follow-up to the ﬁrst Trio release, it became Ronstadt’s project when Parton could not participate because of scheduling conﬂicts. The sales were disappointing; the album peaked at seventy-ﬁve on Billboard 200 and did not yield any successful singles. For her next release, Ronstadt turned to an entirely new audience: children. Inspired by her two adopted children—her daughter was ﬁve at the time and her son two—the 1996 album Dedicated To the One I Love contains classic rock songs turned into lullabies, including seemingly unlikely candidates such as Queen’s “We Will Rock You.” Other tunes, such as “Be My Baby” (popularized by the Ronettes) and the Beach Boys’s “In My Room,” are more logical choices. Gone are the electric guitars; instead, ﬂute, strings, harp, and other

Linda Ronstadt

celestial-sounding instruments are used. Recorded at home, it was a smart gamble that paid off, hitting number one on Billboard’s Top Kid Audio chart and number seventy-eight on the Billboard 200 and earning her a Grammy Award for Best Musical Album for Children. Ronstadt’s We Ran in 1998 is to date her last attempt at pop music, and its relative lack of traction in terms of sales suggests that Ronstadt had somewhat exhausted that audience. With overall production from Glyn Johns and some additional help from career supporters Peter Asher, Waddy Wachtel, and George Massenberg, the album is polished, but the choice of covers is perhaps not adventurous or noteworthy enough for contemporary audiences. We Ran peaked at 160 on the Billboard 200 and had no signiﬁcant airplay for singles. Ronstadt ended the decade on a high with Trio II, which went to number four on the country chart and sixty-two on the Billboard 200. The record, released in late 1998, was another collection of classic material ﬂawlessly executed by Ronstadt, Harris, and Parton, with takes on the Carter Family, Del McCoury, and Neil Young. The three nabbed a Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals for the song “After the Gold Rush.” A few months later, a duet album with Harris came out called Western Wall: The Tucson Sessions. The pair embarked on a tour—the ﬁrst one for Ronstadt since 1995. Her next release can be described as a predictable move when an artist is in between projects or creative endeavors or wants a sure-ﬁre chart hit: a holiday collection in 2000 titled A Merry Little Christmas. Ronstadt sings some of her favorites, such as some traditional English and Welsh carols along with “Silent Night,” Mel Torme’s “The Christmas Song,” and Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas.” During the 1990s, Ronstadt’s career was not in a transition per se, but personal matters made her inclined to slow down. The projects with Harris and Parton were still creatively engaging and rewarding to her, but she spent a portion of the decade at home, taking care of her two adopted children after they were born. As a single mother, it was logistically, physically, and ﬁnancially challenging for her to take them on the road with her. She was able to deduct expenses such as her hairdresser but could not deduct childcare or meals for her children; it became an expensive enterprise. She moved back home to Tucson and discovered that she had an autoimmune disorder called Hashimoto’s disease, whose side effects include low energy levels. Practical matters, though, encouraged her return to the stage. “[A]bout the time they started turning 10, I looked into their future and saw how much college cost and went back on tour” (Iwasaki 2007). Ronstadt seems to have put her rock and roll days behind her in her later releases. After her Christmas release, her output could best be characterized by her love of pop standards and love of folk music. Despite the fact that after the death of Nelson Riddle in 1985 Ronstadt admitted that she could not imagine returning to jazz, she did come back but with a smaller ensemble this time.

389

390

Women Icons of Popular Music

Hummin’ to Myself in 2004 was released as her ﬁrst output for Verve. The jazz vocal album is comprised of songs arranged by the pianist and composer Alan Broadbent. She offers her takes on Frank Loesser’s “Never Will I Marry,” which owes much to the Nancy Wilson-Cannonball Adderly version of the tune, and “I’ve Never Been in Love Before,” along with classics by Cole Porter such as “Miss Otis Regrets,” “Get Out of Town,” and “I Fall In Love Too Easily.” The album’s surprise inclusion is an unusual, lesser-known choice, “Tell Him I Said Hello,” which is most notably associated with smoky-voiced jazz singer Betty Carter, who recorded it in 1955. Rather than opt for a full orchestra, a small but accomplished band accompanies her, including David “Fathead” Newman, Lewis Nash, and Christian McBride. The album was produced by her long-term collaborators John Boylan and George Massenburg. Hummin’ to Myself was well-received from critics; Natalie Zoe of the Austin American Statesman said that “Linda Ronstadt’s voice has lost little of its heft, plumpness, or its ability to cling to just the right word in a vocal line.” The Boston Globe remarked on the intimacy of the tunes, aided by the small combo rather than “buttery orchestrations.” Hummin’ hit number 2 on the jazz album charts and peaked at 166 on the Billboard 200, and as of its release she had sold 60 million records worldwide. Her love of folk music led her toward a 2006 collaboration with Ann Savoy of the Savoy-Doucet Cajun Band for Adieu False Heart. The album received two Grammy Award nominations, including Best Traditional Folk Album. The pair, who dubbed themselves the “zozo sisters” (zozo means little bird in Creole), duet on a couple of songs including “Walk Away Renee.” Ronstadt does her own take on Richard Thompson’s “King of Bohemia” and Julie Miller’s “I Can’t Get Over You,” while Savoy leads on Thompson’s “Burn’s Supper” and Bill Monroe’s “The One I Love is Gone,” along with the title track written by Arthur Smith. The Cajun-Creole spirit suffuses the record, but it is not a purist attempt nor exclusively comprised of those genres of music or music from Louisiana. In the folk music publication Sing Out!, writer Tom Druckenmiller said that it is “a collection of love songs from very different perspective, beautifully sung and masterfully played” (Druckenmiller 2007). Adieu False Heart proves again that Ronstadt is often at her best when she is collaborating with others, especially vocalists. The album fared well as independent release, hitting twelve on that chart and peaking at 146 on the Billboard 200. In 2007, Ronstadt lent her voice to an Ella Fitzgerald tribute album called We All Love Ella, along with other performers including Dianne Reeves, Lizz Wright, k.d. lang, Diana Krall, and Michael Bublé. Never predictable, while on tour in summer 2007, Ronstadt told interviewers that she was interested in recording an album of Mexican trios. “And that style, in itself, is divided

I like really soft, pretty, simple music. . . . I like everything to be very distinct; I don’t like to record with ten thousand instruments.

Linda Ronstadt

into three areas. So there is a deep resource of musical creativity there” (Iwasaki 2007). It does not seem that she is ready to quit just yet.

MISSION, MOTIVATION, PROCESS Along many other women who got their early and important breaks in the late 1960s and 1970s, Ronstadt was no stranger to encountering men in studios and in the music business who either would not take her seriously, would treat her as a sex symbol, or would give her a hard time in general. For many female artists of her generation, it took a while before she could gather the courage to articulate her opinions to producers and other musicians, inside the studio and out. “When I got to L.A, I was so intimidated by the quality of everyone’s musicianship that instead of trying to get better, I chickened out and wouldn’t work” (Hirshey 2001). The remark is revealing, considering the millions of recordings that bear her name. In fact, her self-esteem issues sometimes were so debilitating that they prohibited her from performing; so vicious was her own sense of guilt and inadequacy that sometimes she would go onstage and be unable to sing. “When Heart Like a Wheel went to number one, I just walked around apologizing. I could see that my supposed friends resented me. I went around going, ‘I’m not that good of a singer’ ” (Hirshey 2001). After therapy, Ronstadt became courageous enough to pose on the cover of Rolling Stone in soft pink lingerie and to pose in another separate photo shoot for photographer Annie Leibovitz. Still, during her tour in 1976 she repeatedly threw up during the ﬁrst couple of weeks, exhausted and nervous from the process of touring and performing. She eventually got through her stage fright with the help of a psychiatrist. Her image as a sex symbol came as a bit of surprise to her, and her love life was complicating matters. Ronstadt was known for her many famous boyfriends over the years, including Jerry Brown, Albert Brooks, George Lucas, and Steve Martin. She described her policy about love relationships thusly: “I keep the door open with the screen door slammed . . . and a strong dog at the door. That’s the policy of my heart” (Bego 1990, 57). Regardless of her self-doubt about her appearance or talent, from the beginning Ronstadt trusted her musical instincts and stood her ground when her ideas or choices were questioned. She contended that the idea to go to Nashville to record 1970’s Silk Purse was that of her producer Elliot F. Mazer and Capitol Records—an idea she later spoke out against. However, once there, she insisted on the inclusion of the song “Long, Long Time” written by Gary White. She was met with much resistance; people said that the song was so sweet and syrupy that it would put people to sleep. Ronstadt was convinced it had hit potential, so the session musicians met at 9 am on a Saturday morning and recorded it. She managed to persuade Capitol to release it as the only single and watched it go to twenty-ﬁve on the Billboard chart, thus car-

391

392

Women Icons of Popular Music

rying the album to 103. Its success gained her not only radio play but a Grammy Award nomination for Best Country Vocal Performance. What’s ironic though, is that in retrospect, she dislikes the album, and said that her music was “very deﬁnitely California music” not Nashville country music (Bego 1990, 36). Ronstadt always had clear ideas, though. In the subsequent decade she would be told by her record label that the material for 1983’s What’s New? was not commercial enough and releasing it could possibly spell the death knell of her career. Coming off the gold-selling Get Closer, What’s New?, however, went platinum within three months of its release. “I just wanted to make people dream, make them slow dance around the living room, sit down on the couch and make out” (Bego 1990, 140). Ronstadt’s career also is a testament to the power of community, collaboration, and friendship, from her early days befriending other up-and-coming artists to her lifelong development of a sort of informal support group among herself, Bonnie Raitt, Wendy Waldman, and Maria Muldaur. Meeting Dolly Parton also taught Ronstadt something: “She taught me that you don’t have to sacriﬁce your femininity in order to have equal status. The only thing that gives you equal status with other musicians is your musicianship. Period” (Bego 1990, 63). Although she admitted that initially she was intimidated when she met Harris because of the singer’s talent, Ronstadt’s generous artistic spirit won out. Ronstadt believes the world needs more talented female singers because women need to learn from each other and that such collaborations make the music business better, too. In an interview in 2007, Ronstadt talked about her history of collaboration with other vocalists. “There’s something that happens when you work with someone else and you end up with something you couldn’t have done on your own. When I sing with Ann, or sing with Emmy, I always get something different out of my voice” (Nailen 2007). Ronstadt also considers touring as an integral part of her process; she called live performance a consequence of making music, and creativity sparks her passion to keep going. “I love walking into a bare room with good musicians and knowing that there is nothing in the room but talent. I love creating music. And I ﬁnd that when I’m almost done with a project, I want to start another right away” (Iwasaki 2007). It’s a sentiment she has been expressing nearly her entire career. In the late 1970s she admitted that she cannot sit around and do nothing, even on her time off in between albums; it is difﬁcult for her to have unstructured time. With that approach, inspiration and the next record are never far beyond her reach. Ronstadt is not known as a songwriter and has tried it only a few times in her career. She wrote a ballad called “Lo Siento Mi Vida” with Kenny Edwards for her 1976 album Hasten Down the Wind, sung mostly in Spanish. She also wrote another ballad, “Try Me Again,” in collaboration with Andrew Gold. When asked about writing songs, she said that the process was alien and unknownable because she perceives herself as strictly an interpreter. She admitted

Linda Ronstadt

that she’s had moments when she has been compelled to write a song, such as when she was trying to sort out something that had happened to her. Some critics speculated that “Try Me Again” was written with exboyfriend J.D. Souther in mind. It tells the story of driving past a former lover’s house and wondering, “[C]ould you take me back and try me/try me again?”

393

She’s got a strong beautiful voice and really unbelievable power. God, when she belts out “What’s New?” you really believe it. —Nelson Riddle, on Ronstadt

LEGACY AND OTHER INTERESTS In 1978, Ronstadt made her ﬁrst ﬁlm appearance, playing herself in the ﬁlm FM about rock and roll. The ﬁlm was not a tremendous box ofﬁce success but it is believed to have served as the inspiration for the television series WKRP in Cincinnati. The soundtrack was more of a hit than the ﬁlm, with live versions of Ronstadt’s “Tumbling Dice” and “Poor Poor Pitiful Me” along with appearances from the Doobie Brothers, James Taylor, Billy Joel, Steely Dan, and other pop superstars of the day. In addition to her role with The Pirates of Penzance on stage and screen, Ronstadt was cast in Puccini’s La Boheme in 1984. The key component of Ronstadt’s legacy, beyond the impressive record sales, is her musical curiosity, and her versatility is result of that approach. The fact that she has followed her interests and music that appeals to her, regardless of genre, has enabled her career to span nearly four decades. Ronstadt proved to be a trailblazer, as the 2000s found many singers, including Norah Jones and Madeleine Peyroux, capitalizing on the cross-genre approach that Ronstadt had helped make possible throughout her career. Like many artists, over the years Ronstadt lent her voice and her time to various causes. In 1987, Ronstadt appeared alongside James Brown, Neil Diamond, Kris Kristofferson, and Crosby, Stills, and Nash at a Fourth of July welcome home concert in Washington, DC, for Vietnam veterans. The concert was aired on HBO and raised money through tickets sales and individual donations for veterans’ organizations. Ronstadt also appeared at a San Francisco event that raised approximately a half a million dollars for local AIDS groups called Aid & Comfort. She has also supported causes that help migrant workers and People for the American Way, which works against censorship, and prefers to chart her own charitable course rather than participate in the causes that periodically sweep through the music business. During her 2007 tour, some of the proceeds of her performance with the Utah Symphony were donated to the Regence Caring Foundation, which provides free dental care to uninsured children. Part of her legacy is her generosity—personal and professional—toward other artists. Ronstadt has appeared on countless albums by musician friends of hers, but she most notably gave boosts to the career of Karla Bonoff, a

394

Women Icons of Popular Music

songwriter, when she became the ﬁrst artist to record a Bonoff song. In fact, two of them, “If He’s Ever Near” and “Lose Again,” appear on Hasten Down the Wind. Ronstadt also has had an instrumental role in the career of singer Nicolette Larson; she appeared on Larson’s debut record, Nicolette, and sang backing vocals on three songs. She even somehow got the multi-instrumentalist, multi-genre songwriter David Lindley, who had worked extensively with Jackson Browne, signed in 1987 back to his label Elektra, which had dropped him. Her career-long friendship with Emmylou Harris is a testament to her strong commitment to her craft, her ability to sustain a fulﬁlling partnership, and her dedication to learning and improving herself as an artist.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Heart Like a Wheel. Capitol, 1974 Prisoner in Disguise. Asylum, 1975 Hasten Down the Wind. Asylum, 1976 Simple Things. Asylum, 1977 Living in the U.S.A. Asylum, 1978 What’s New? Asylum, 1983 Trio. Warner Bros., 1987 Canciones por mi Padre. Asylum, 1987 Hummin’ To Myself. Verve, 2004 Ann Savoy and Linda Ronstadt: Adieu False Heart. Vanguard Records, 2006

FURTHER READING Barol, Bill. “Ronstadt Comes to Rest.” Newsweek (October 30, 1989). Bego, Mark. Linda Ronstadt: It’s So Easy. Austin: Eakin Press, 1990. Connelly, Christopher. “Review of What’s New? Review.” Rolling Stone 406 (October 13, 1983). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/lindaronstadt/albums/ album/147129/review/5942520/whats_new. Druckenmiller, Tom. “Review of Linda Ronstadt and Ann Savoy, Adieu False Heart.” Sing Out! (January 2007): 150. Dubro, Alec. “Silk Purse. Review.” Rolling Stone 61 (June 25, 1970). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/lindaronstadt/albums/album/213208/review/ 5945403/silk_purse. Fong-Torres, Ben. “Linda Ronstadt: Heartbreak on Wheels.” Rolling Stone 183 (March 27, 1975). Galvin, Peter. “Winter Light. Review.” Rolling Stone 671 (December 9, 1993). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/lindaronstadt/albums/album/140891/ review/5944428/winter_light. George-Warren, Holly, Patricia Romanowski, and Jon Pareles. The Rolling Stone Encylopedia of Rock and Roll. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001. Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/lindaronstadt/biography.

Linda Ronstadt

Herbst, Peter. “Review of Simple Dreams.” Rolling Stone 250 (October 20, 1977). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/lindaronstadt/albums/album/ 130706/review/5947016/simple_dreams. Herbst, Peter. “Linda Rondstadt: The Rolling Stone Interview.” Rolling Stone 276 (October 19, 1978): 50–59. Hirshey, Gerri. We’ve Gotta Get Out of This Place: The True, Tough Story of Women in Rock. New York: Grove Press, 2001, pp. 85–86. Holden, Stephen. “Don’t Cry Now. Review.” Rolling Stone 147 (November 8, 1973). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/lindaronstadt/albums/album/ 235317/review/5943486/dont_cry_now Holden, Stephen. “Heart Like a Wheel. Review.” Rolling Stone 178 (January 16, 1975). Holden, Stephen. “Mad Love. Review.” Rolling Stone 314 (April 3, 1980). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/lindaronstadt/albums/album/166165/review/ 5944033/mad_love. Holden, Stephen. “Linda Ronstadt Celebrates the Golden Age of Pop.” New York Times (September 4, 1983). Holden, Stephen. “Linda Ronstadt Explores Her Heritage.” New York Times (December 6, 1987). Iwasaki, Scott. “The Versatile Voice of Linda Ronstadt.” Deseret Morning News, Salt Lake City, UT (August 24, 2007). Marsh, Dave. “Review of Prisoner in Disguise.” Rolling Stone 200 (November 20, 1975). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/lindaronstadt/albums/ album/219020/review/5943504/prisoner_in_disguise. McGee, David. “Review of Hasten Down the Wind.” Rolling Stone 222 (September 23, 1976). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/lindaronstadt/ albums/album/301674/review/5946956/hasten_down_the_wind. McLane, Daisann. “Review of Mas Canciones.” Rolling Stone 623 (February 6, 1992). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/lindaronstadt/albums/ album/200220/review/5941414/mas_canciones. Nailen, Dan. “Ronstadt at Home With Riddle or Rock-n-Roll.” The Salt Lake Tribune (August 23, 2007). Sterritt, David. “Linda Ronstadt in a Gilbert & Sullivan Operetta?” New York Times (August 1, 1980). Swenson John. “Linda Ronstadt’s Secret Love.” United Press International (December 31, 1987). Tucker, Ken. “Review of Get Closer.” Rolling Stone 382 (November 11, 1982). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/lindaronstadt/albums/album/239044/ review/5941814/get_closer. Varga, George. “Lindley Gets a Boost from Ronstadt.” San Diego Union-Tribune (September 4, 1987).

395

AP/Wide World Photos

Diana Ross

398

Women Icons of Popular Music

OVERVIEW Diana Ross was the lead singer for the 1960s girl group the Supremes, whose success as not only women but as African American women at the time rivaled the success of The Beatles. The Supremes helped put Motown Records, then a ﬂedgling label started by Berry Gordy Jr., on the map and launch the careers of many other artists. The success of the Supremes showed the music business and America that female African American singers were a viable commercial force, and during their rise girl groups spiked in commercial popularity. The group’s music blended soul and pop, but their songs about love, loss, and relationships kept their content, some would argue, predictable and formulaic. In hindsight, some critics have seen their music as superﬁcial or thin, at least in terms of their biggest hit songs. Some critics also have viewed the band as more of a promotional (and ﬁnancial) tool for Berry Gordy, who oversaw their rise to fame, rather than acknowledge the merits of their own singing stylings, fashionable (and trend-setting) stage presence, and performance appeal. Through the years, the group members of Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, and Florence Ballard have certainly had their differences, which have been aired both publicly and privately in newspapers and autobiographies. Ross faced an easy transition to a solo career; in 1967 Gordy renamed the group Diana Ross and the Supremes, and by 1970 she was ready to explore her other options. Through the course of the 1970s she released several charttopping albums, appeared in three ﬁlms, and had several number one hit singles, starting with “Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hand)” in 1970 and moving into the 1980s with “Upside Down” and “I’m Coming Out.” During this decade she was still a Motown artist, but in the early 1980s she switched to RCA, which released the bulk of her records through the decade with the exception of a few records, including the soundtrack to the 1981 ﬁlm Endless Love, which went gold, propelled by the title track duet between Ross and Lionel Richie. Ross’s music and her presence have been pervasive; she has worked in music, television, ﬁlm, and Broadway, with success at nearly every turn and with every new project. Many of her concerts from live television programs were released as albums and were a tremendous success. Over the course of her career, both with the Supremes and during her solo years, Ross started to develop a reputation as a diva, partly due to her ﬂair for the dramatic and her unapologetically ambitious nature. When the Supremes were starting out, Ross’s sense of her talent and destiny was prepossessing; she believed in it with unwavering conviction. It seemed increasingly apparent to those who knew her, the other members of the Supremes, and Gordy that the group was merely the starting point for her. During the early part of her solo career, she was often referred to as “the black Streisand” by the media. Ross’s personal life has been fraught with tabloid-interest controversy, from her affair with Motown Records president Berry Gordy to speculation about

Diana Ross

399

the paternity of her ﬁrst daughter. Her relationship with the members of the Supremes was complicated, as My separateness, my aloneone might imagine a high proﬁle group with three inte- ness, has always been here gral members could be. Ross has been criticized for her and is here now, a recurring ambition, which others in Motown have perceived as theme that has continuously ruthlessness, according to biographer J. Randy Tarabor- run through my life. Deep relli, who has published several books about her. down inside . . . I am still Ross has chalked up a number of awards and acco- profoundly alone. lades, and when her Supremes years and solo careers are considered, her track record is formidable and difﬁcult to match. The Supremes scored an impressive array of number one singles, including “Baby Love,” “Where Did Our Love Go?,” “You Can’t Hurry Love,” and “Stop! In the Name of Love.” As a solo artist, twenty of her songs have placed on the rhythm and blues and pop music charts. Her album sales are estimated worldwide at over 100 million copies, she has been awarded one Tony Award, seven American Music Awards, and one Golden Globe for her role playing Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues and has been nominated for twelve Grammy Awards and an Oscar for Best Actress.

EARLY YEARS Ross was supposed to be named Diane, but because of a clerical error in the hospital in Detroit was instead named Diana. Regardless, most of her family called her Diane, except for her mother, who called her Diana. Ross was born in March 1944 as the second child and daughter of six children to her mother Ernestine Moten, who was outgoing and sensitive, and her father Fred, who by most accounts remained somewhat emotionally detached. Her father was a professional boxer for part of his adult life and was perceived as driven and serious. Shortly after her birth, her father was drafted and served his time in the Philippines for a couple of years, but overall, her childhood was relatively stable and the family worked hard but was not poor, in contrast to some of their neighbors; Detroit was a changing place during this time, Many African Americans from the South moved to the area for manufacturing and factory jobs, changing the face of the predominantly white communities. She lived in Detroit for most of her upbringing, and when the family moved in 1955 to a middle-class neighborhood, she found herself down the street from a teenaged Smokey Robinson; Ross would watch him rehearse his routine on his front steps. But March 1958, when Ross was fourteen, there were six children, and her father decided to move the family to a low-income housing area called Brewster Projects. It was a tight-knit community where people looked out for one another. From the beginning, though, it became apparent to her family that she inherited her father’s serious approach to life. Ross’s mother observed her

400

Women Icons of Popular Music

daughter’s nature, saying, “She seemed older than her years. She was the kind of child you felt you should treat like an adult. I would talk to her like she was grown! And she would look at me like she knew what I was saying!” (Taraborrelli 2007, 13). Childhood friends describe her as an unstoppable force, someone who didn’t like being pushed around and wasn’t afraid of pushing back when the situation warranted. Her older cousin Virginia Ruth, who lived outside Atlanta, was Ross’s role model: She was a singer, she was attending college, and she held herself together with poise. Ross was taken with her, but her cousin was tragically killed; family members still believe it was the Ku Klux Klan. Ross’s ﬁrst experiments with singing came informally, in her bedroom, mouthing the lyrics to songs on her record player by Etta James and other artists. When she was about eleven, she sang at a party her mother gave, and by the end of the evening, after passing a hat around the room, Ross had collected enough money to buy tap shoes for her dance lessons. Ross left Detroit with such ambition and burning drive that writers and critics have perceived her as someone who could not wait to get out and was eager to leave her past be hind her. Others in the Detroit neighborhood—which, at the time was also the home of the budding label and tastemaker Motown and therefore chockablock with other singers—viewed her as a snob. From the very start of her career, though, Ross has remained mysterious, perhaps misunderstood. Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, and Florence Ballard met in the late 1950s in Detroit’s Brewster housing project. Their ﬁrst name as a group was the Primettes, and in that incarnation they were a quartet that also included Betty McGlown. Ross was the third person to come to the group. Ballard had auditioned for Milton Jenkins, a manager who was working with a group called the Primes, who wanted to ﬁnd a companion group of women to pair them with. Ballard, then ﬁfteen, knew Wilson, who was just fourteen. The two became friends quickly, and their personalities and voices—Ballard, big and strong with gospel leanings, and Wilson, sweet and adept with harmonies—balanced. One of the members of the Primes, Paul Williams, heard Ross singing on the stoop with her friends. He approached her, and at ﬁrst she was not interested; she had lost the lead in a school play, and her teacher told her that she sang through her nose, which was not desirable. She told him she’d have to talk to her mother, and eventually Jenkins, polite and dressed in a sharkskin suit, showed up to ask permission. Ernestine agreed to his persuasion—it would keep Diana busy and keep her away from boys, he argued—and allowed Ross to become part of the group. Her mother had enjoyed singing when she was younger, so perhaps she wanted her daughter to take advantage of the opportunity she did not have. Her father, however, was less than pleased. He did not want music to detract from her education, which he believed was the only true path to success; he himself had worked through Wayne State University while some of the older children were very young. Ross worked hard for his approval; she felt that he bestowed it more on her older sister Barbara,

Diana Ross

401

perceived to be the smart and more attractive one, Failure was impossible, who would go on to become a doctor. When the four girls got together at Jenkins’s house because I made no space to for rehearsals, the ﬁrst song they sang was the Ray consider anything negative. I Charles song “The Night Time is the Right Time.” could only visualize success. —on looking back at years with Ballard’s voice was the biggest, and she had good vocal the Primettes command. Since she considered herself the group’s founder, she sang lead on most songs. Ross, on the other hand, had a different sound altogether, which Wilson later remarked was a “weird, little whiny sound” (Taraborrelli 2007, 31). Personalities clashed early and often, because Ross always was searching for more of the spotlight. In July 1960, on her father’s birthday, they performed at a talent contest near the Canadian border and won ﬁrst place. A buzz started to develop about the four teenage girls. Ross was just sixteen. At the show, a man approached Ballard and handed her his card. He was a talent scout for Berry Gordy, who had been working for several years writing songs and recording artists such as the young Smokey Robinson. The label he was starting to form would eventually take the name of Motown Records. Curiously, Ballard remained mum about it to the group. It was Ross who managed to get them time with Gordy, whose hit-making had been proven with Smokey Robinson (“Got a Job”) and Barret Strong’s “Money (That’s What I Want).” Ross contacted Robinson, who contacted Gordy, and the four teenage girls from Detroit headed to Gordy’s self-styled studio, which he dubbed “Hitsville USA,” for an audition. The Primettes sang a few songs with Ballard on lead vocals, but Gordy seemed unimpressed. After they were ﬁnished, Ross said they had one more, and it was the song “There Goes My Baby” by the Drifters. She took the lead vocals, and reportedly, Gordy stopped dead in his tracks. Though her voice was not as technically smooth and reﬁned as Ballard’s, there was emotion behind it despite its piercing, nasal quality. In Detroit in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Ballard’s voice did not stand out, but Ross, with her big eyes and bony frame, was something different altogether. He declared that three out of four of them were too young and told them to come back once they had all ﬁnished high school. But Ross was determined that Gordy would make stars of them, so they kept coming back, hanging out in the kitchen, listening to other singers, getting tips, and observing things. They became part of the fabric of the building. McGlown left the group at the end of summer 1960 to get married and was replaced by Barbara Martin. The girls’ perseverance paid off, but not for Motown initially. After Martin joined the group, the Primettes released a single on the Lu-Pine Label in 1960 with Ross singing lead on “Tears of Sorrow” and Wilson taking “Pretty Baby.” The songs were failures. Gordy gave them a chance, however, by inviting them to sing backing vocals for a young African American artist he had signed named Mable John.

402

Women Icons of Popular Music

Toward the end of 1960, the Primettes were on their way to becoming the Supremes. Gordy offered them a recording contract with Tamla (the name of his label at the time) and also offered Ross a job as his secretary. When the girls signed their contract in January 1961, they were signed as the Supremes. Ross’s —Berry Gordy Jr., explaining father was still extremely unhappy with her decision his choice to make Ross the lead and even tried to force her to go to college, but her singer of the Supremes mother supported her decision. Besides, by this point, Ernestine and Fred had separated, so his opinion, while it mattered, carried less weight. Their producer and manager Richard Morris started booking them gigs at clubs in Detroit, some of which were in dangerous or sketchy neighborhoods. They opened up for blues artist Wilson Pickett at 20 Grand in Detroit. The early days were a bit rocky with struggles for a couple of years to ﬁnd an audience, shifts in personnel, and personal issues. Ballard unexpectedly stopped showing up for rehearsals and subsequently left the group for a short period of time with no explanation. When Wilson and Ross ﬁnally met up with her, Ballard looked depressed and tired. She told Wilson that one evening after getting separated from her brother at a club, she accepted a ride home with someone she knew who then raped her at knifepoint. Later, in an extensive interview with a reporter who was gathering information to write a book about her, she kept that story hidden and instead said her brother wanted her out of the group. Regardless, the dangers of being a young, African American woman performing in clubs, underage, were keenly felt.

Diana had magic. She had feeling. Exuberence. . . . Her voice was totally unique, totally something you never heard before.

CAREER PATH The Supreme Years Although Ross is considered in the eyes of many casual listeners as the lead singer, Wilson and Ballard periodically took the lead vocals during early recordings before the group became a household name. The ﬁrst Supremes single, “I Want a Guy,” was released in 1961 on Motown’s subsidiary, Tamla, with all four members present for the recording and Ross singing lead on the track. They earned $40 a week, split four ways. Although the song was not a commercial success, they were happy to be working and singing and recording. Ross’s crush on Smokey Robinson (who was twenty-one at the time) was blossoming into something else, despite the fact that he was married. He even loaned her money so she could attend beauty school in the evenings. Perhaps Ross thought that having his attention would be good for her career, because he, too, was so close with Gordy. Ross graduated from Cass Technical High School in Detroit in June 1962. Cass was a specialized school that required a B average for admittance and

Diana Ross

took students from all over the Detroit area: The rest of the Supremes went to Northeastern, another public high school. Ross’s sister and father had attended Cass, so it seemed natural that she would, too. Unfortunately, it reinforced an already palpable separateness from the rest of the Supremes, as well as the rest of her neighbors in the projects, many of whom felt Ross perceived herself as superior. At school, she seemed lonely and out of place, but she was developing a strong interest in clothing design and fashion and starting to take modeling classes on Saturdays. Soon after high school graduation, Martin announced she was pregnant and left the group. From that point forward, the Supremes would remain a trio. Gordy switched them to the main label, Motown, which was evolving into the primary hit maker in Hitsville. It carried teenage label mates the Marvelettes and their catchy number one pop hit, the ﬁrst for the label, “Please Mr. Postman.” The ﬁrst release for the Supremes was simply titled Meet the Supremes, and it was a collection of some of their singles and B-sides, none of which had been a tremendous success, so the album did not make any impact. In fact, between 1961 and 1963, they released eight singles, none of which entered the Top 40. Ross and the girls were getting impatient, even though Gordy had put them on a Motown bill at the Apollo Theater in Harlem in late 1962 despite their “no-hit” status. Compared to the other acts on the label, the Supremes, with their three-part harmonies, were more cool and laid back in their stage presence, and Ross’s voice was something audiences were not yet accustomed to. Gordy decided to make the group his top priority in early 1963; he sensed that Ross had the commitment and the drive to work hard, become successful, and devote herself to her career. Yet it would take some more misﬁres before the group had a sure hit, which was “When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes,” the ﬁrst of many hit songs written for them by the Motown team of brothers Brian Holland, Edward Holland Jr., and Lamont Dozier (usually referred to as Holland-Dozier-Holland). It appeared in late 1963 and peaked at number twenty-three on the pop charts. With a conga beat and a horn section, Ross’s voice was more assertive, and her presentation was strong and full. The songwriting team, many musicologists attest, was responsible for creating the Motown sound, characterized most signiﬁcantly by smart lyrics—especially an engaging, memorable hook—and a strong rhythm section. By early 1964, Gordy had decided to make Ross exclusively the lead singer of the group, with the explanation that she had the most “commercial sound,” a fact that occasionally rankled the others. In the spring of that year, they had their ﬁrst number one hit, “Where Did Our Love Go?,” which was also written by Holland-Dozier-Holland. The song became a hit while they were on tour with Dick Clark’s Cavalcade of Stars. They were low on the bill that included the Shirelles, Gene Pitney, the Crystals, and others; by the tour’s end, they were receiving a higher billing, as their song climbed the charts. Their success story seems like the stuff of myth, or at least, a rock and roll ﬁlm.

403

404

Women Icons of Popular Music

The song set the style for the future endeavors. Ross starts the song crooning sweetly, “Baby, baby, where did our love go?” With silky smooth vocals, a melody that is hard to forget, and a danceable tempo, the song became a prototype for their future number one hits over the course of the next year, including “Baby Love” and “Come See About Me,” both of which became number one pop chart hits shortly after their release in September and October, respectively. Many of these songs quickly made their way onto the album Where Did Our Love Go, released in 1964. The Supremes toured England, appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show (the ﬁrst Motown act to do so), and on another television program with the Beach Boys, Chuck Berry, and the Rolling Stones. In March 1965, they had another smash number one hit with the assertive and playful “Stop! In the Name of Love.” The song has humorous background: Reportedly, Dozier was struck with the idea when he and his girlfriend were arguing, about her suspicion that he was lying to her. He cried out to her “Please, baby! Stop! In the name of love!,” and the two started laughing because it was so silly. The ﬁght ended, and the experience inspired the song’s title and chorus, in which the Supremes request: “Stop! In the Name of Love/Before you break my heart . . . Think it oh-oh-ver.” It also inspired the famous choreography performed ﬁrst in a Motown television broadcast performance in which they acted out the lyrics, putting their hands up, palms facing outward, gesturing toward their heart, and then tapping the sides of the head. The Supremes worked with label mates the Temptations, known for their synchronized on-stage grooving, and came up with choreography suggested by the lyrics. The routine, along with the song, has been synonymous with the Supremes and has outlasted their status as a working group. In 1965, Gordy also set the Supremes to work with a choreographer and set designer for an upcoming performance at the popular nightclub the Copacabana in New York. He spared no expense, training, or preparation when it came to putting together a Supremes show. Consequently, the Supremes embodied a femininity, style, and sophistication with their matching gowns, wigs, and overall smooth, cool delivery. During this year, the song “Back In My Arms Again” also became at a number one hit. In 1965 “Baby Love” earned them a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rhythm and Blues Recording, and in 1966, “Stop! In the Name of Love” was nominated for Best Contemporary Rock and Roll Group Vocal Performance. Several more hits would follow, starting in late 1966 and going through early 1967, with “I Hear a Symphony,” “You Can’t Hurry Love,” “You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” “Love is Here and Now You’re Gone,” and “The Happening.” Their 1966 release The Supremes A Go-Go was the ﬁrst album by an all-female group to hit the top Billboard pop album chart. Popular music and Motown were exploding, so formulaic, catchy, songs were de rigueur; it is only the beneﬁt of hindsight that makes them feel assembly-line and similar.

Diana Ross

The fact that the same group of songwriters, Holland-Dozier-Holland, wrote and produced many of the Supremes’s hits through 1967 lends a feeling of sameness to their work. Much of their work, and that of girl groups in general, can be characterized as a blend of sweetness and an unthreatening but still palpable sassiness, with the female emotional perspective front and center. Often, the songs convey the sense that the women were all too often subjected to the whims of the men in their lives, that they were not yet fully empowered to stand up for themselves. Some music critics have written that girl group music at this time shows women as victims, ones who wait idly by for their man to get himself together, stay committed, or treat her right—or some combination of all three. After the songwriting team Holland-Dozier-Holland departed Motown in 1967 in the wake of disputes about royalties, the Supremes continued to release records. Although not all of them hit the number one spot, they were still a viable, popular group. Some of the singles showed a tougher attitude, especially one of their signature hits “You Just Keep Me Hangin’ On,” which through the years has been covered by other artists. However, Ross’s days with the Supremes were numbered. Her clout was growing, especially with Gordy; the two had developed a personal relationship after his separation from his wife. Looking back, Ross said that their greatest, most important similarity that bound them together through the various stages of her career was something she described as their “powerful life energy” (Ross 1993, 128). It has been documented through biographies and musicals and ﬁlm (Dreamgirls in 1981) that the other Supremes felt overshadowed by Ross. In terms of the larger context of female, African American singers at the time, Ross was in the same musical company as Gladys Knight and Aretha Franklin and Martha Reeves, some of whom were signed to Motown. Some of these other Motown stars, especially Reeves, perceived that label honcho Gordy was devoting an inordinate amount of attention and resources to the Supremes and especially Ross. As the decade started to come to a close, the Supremes were suffering. In spring 1966, Ballard had a bad bout of the ﬂu, and Ross experienced exhaustion and weight loss; the group continued to fracture. Cindy Birdsong, who had been working with Patti LaBelle’s group the Bluebelles, replaced Ballard, who left in the middle of 1967, after a period of instability in the group. (She had become depressed and developed a habit of arriving late, drunk, and/or not at all to performances and rehearsals, according to Ross’s autobiography Secrets of a Sparrow.) Around the same time that Ballard left, Gordy changed the group’s billing to Diana Ross and the Supremes. With a name like that, her fate as a solo artist was sealed. In 1968, the Supremes and the Temptations released two albums together, which capitalized on the former’s largely white fan base and the latter’s largely African American fan base. The collaboration resulted in a tour, a television special on NBC, and a number two hit single, “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me.”

405

406

Women Icons of Popular Music

Solo Years

Well, I wanted to be Diana. I would stand in front of the mirror and just be Diana, miming her songs, her attitude.

It had been a lot of hard work and physically demanding, with performances, recordings, and rehearsals nonstop for a half dozen years, but the time was right for Ross to make her departure. In 1969, she ofﬁcially left the group to pursue her own solo career, —Oprah Winfrey although she did continue to perform with the group for several dates; the last one was Las Vegas, 1970. She was replaced by Jean Terrell, and the Supremes continued to record together in various personnel incarnations (although always with Mary Wilson), until their break-up in 1977. The new Supremes’s albums did not connect or succeed nearly the same as in their earlier years with Ross—the band didn’t hit the charts much after 1972. In the 1970s, Ross, however, released a remarkably proliﬁc seventeen albums, a combination of studio, television, soundtrack, live, and greatest hits. Before her ofﬁcial departure, Ross recorded “Someday We’ll Be Together,” which was still billed as a Supremes song even though she sang it alone. The song went to number one on the pop chart and had the ironic distinction of becoming the group’s ﬁnal number one song, even though she was the only one of the Supremes on the record. Ross said only that Ballard and Wilson couldn’t get into the studio to record, and a couple of other women sang backup on the song. A lot of emotionally difﬁcult things were happening around Ross, and it seemed that change was imminent although it is challenging to chronicle the vagaries. Relationships were starting to become fractured, not only among the group members but between her and Gordy. Gordy was starting the process of moving Motown to Los Angeles, and Ross moved with him around 1970 to California to begin a new chapter. She rented a house down the road from him; they were close but certainly not boyfriend and girlfriend, as Ross told it. Gordy believed that his female stars should not fall in love or get married, Ross said, and that a relationship would ruin their careers. Still, in 1969, when she met the man who would become her husband, Bob Ellis Silberstein, she did not speak about him much. Despite her happiness with Silberstein, things in her personal life were about to get more complicated, rather than easier. Ross and Silberstein wed in January 1971, were married for six years, and had three daughters. A few weeks after the wedding she discovered she was pregnant. She gave birth to her ﬁrst daughter, Rhonda, in August 1971; Ross had the uncomfortable duty of telling her new husband that she was pregnant. (Gordy was the father, a secret she closely guarded much of her life.) Her exit from the Supremes, however, was made much easier because she had recorded several songs on her own and because she was signed to portray the jazz singer Billie Holiday a biographical ﬁlm about her life called Lady Sings the Blues. When it was announced that Ross would play Holiday, Ross

Diana Ross

recounted that the press could not believe the casting choice; it didn’t seem to make sense. The two artists seemingly had nothing in common. Ross met the challenge—she had never acted before—encouraged by Gordy, who believed she could do it. Ross turned in a ﬁne performance in the ﬁlm, which was cowritten by Motown employees Chris Clark and Suzanne DePasse, the latter of whom is a close friend of Ross’s. Reviewers criticized some of the poetic license the ﬁlm took with details of Holiday’s life but not necessarily Ross’s performance. William Wolf from Cue magazine predicted that Ross would be “the biggest movie superstar to come along since Barbra Streisand, and she possesses deeper acting ability” (Taraborrelli 2007, 266). According to Stephen Davis of Rolling Stone, the two-album soundtrack “suffers from the association [with the ﬁlm] but still comes off as probably Diana Ross’s most sophisticated recording” and that she brings “a new spirit to the old tunes” (Davis 1973). Davis wrote that somehow, Ross sang in a style that was halfway between her own and overt mimicry of Holiday’s distinct one. After the ﬁlm came out, Ross recorded an album of standards called The Blue Album, which was not released until many years later. Writing for Rolling Stone, Tom Moon asserted that perhaps Ross did not have the jazz pedigree required for some of the up-tempo numbers, the energy of which bordered on the level seen in a Vegas show, but that Ross’s voice worked well on the ballads. The ﬁlm did not make her a lot of money, but its cache helped to increase her earning potential and raised the cost of her concert appearance fee signiﬁcantly. It also earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Before the ﬁlm came out, Ross developed a theatrical solo show with extensive costume, lighting, and other visual attractions that she toured with in smaller venues before debuting in New York and Las Vegas. Ross was thrilled to be able to communicate so directly and openly with her audience between songs. She would talk about what mattered to her and bask in the special energy of live performance. In light of those ideas and her own sense of right and wrong, and of women’s rights and civil rights, it makes some sense that her ﬁrst solo song, which had been recorded in April 1970, was called “Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hand).” The idyllic verses espouse a watereddown version of many of the values of the 1960s women’s and civil rights movements—universal ideas of human kindness and equality—set to a waltzy, almost anthemic chorus that declares, “Reach out and touch somebody’s hand/make this world a better place, if you can.” With strings, female backup vocals, and a strong rhythm, in some ways it still sounded like a Motown record, but Ross’s voice is front and center. “Reach Out and Touch” was slow to climb the charts, and Ross kept touring and performing, preparing for the Billie Holiday role. Eventually, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” became a number one hit on the R&B and pop singles charts—her version is noteworthy because the verses are like the spoken word, and she does not reach the chorus until the song is nearly over, but the verses build a momentum over the course of six long minutes, and the lyrics

407

408

Women Icons of Popular Music

testify about the power of love. A shorter version was released as a single eventually after radio stations started creating their own edit of the song. Both of these hits were written by the husband-and-wife songwriting team of Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson; Marvin Gaye had a hit with “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” in 1967 before Ross tackled it. Gordy was hungry for another hit for Ross and teamed up songwriter Michael Masser with Motown’s Ron Miller, who had worked with the Supremes. The two collaborated and wrote the song “Touch Me in the Morning,” a title that Miller came up with before the song was even written. During his time working with her on “Touch Me,” a song Ross initially disliked, Miller got the impression that Ross was absorbed in her budding interest in ﬁlms and less so in recording. That process was fraught with disagreement over what key to sing it in; the songwriters ultimately won. Nevertheless, she experienced her second number one single (this time on the pop and Adult Contemporary charts) with “Touch Me in the Morning.” Rolling Stone reviewer Mark Vining panned the record, though, saying that Touch Me in the Morning was “drastically underperformed, short on engaging music and lacking in any direction except Ross’s pursuit of the middle of the road. It represents a disturbing misuse of an intelligent, unique talent” (Vining 1973). Regardless of what rock and roll’s bible declared about Touch Me, the record album, released in June 1973, was a number one R&B hit and a number ﬁve pop album hit. Later in this year, Ross recorded an album with label mate Marvin Gaye called Diana and Marvin. Their voices are both smooth and easy to listen to, and although artistically they were at different points in their career, their collaborations resulted in several charting songs in 1973 and 1974, with “You’re a Special Part of Me” hitting number four. Jon Landau in Rolling Stone concluded that despite some missteps on selection, production, or execution of the material, “[A]nything that moves Diana Ross closer to what she does best—sing well-produced, R&B pop music—deserves special consideration and a little of our patience” (Landau 1973). In 1975 she appeared in the ﬁlm Mahogany playing a character named Tracy Chambers who was struggling to succeed as a young fashion designer. Halfway through the ﬁlming Gordy took over as director from Tony Richardson, who had written the part expressly for Ross. Time magazine scolded Berry for “squandering one of American’s most natural resources: Diana Ross” (Posner 286). The ﬁlm was not successful, but Ross made her mark in other ways. She sang the ﬁlm’s “Theme from Mahogany (Do You Know Where You’re Going To),” written by Gerry Gofﬁn and Michael Masser, which went to number one. Ross was on a roll, following that with her second eponymous album in 1976. Ross shows her range, taking “Smile” and jazzing it up, but then turning disco on Ashford and Simpson’s “Ain’t Nothin’ But a Maybe.” The record also includes the Masser-Sawyer composition “I Thought It Took a Little Time (But Today I Fell in Love).” “Love Hangover” hit number one on the R&B, pop, and disco charts, where it hovered for quite some time after the

Diana Ross

409

album’s release. The album’s sales were propelled by the success of the single, hitting number four on the Berry Gordy did not have to black albums charts and ﬁve on the pop charts. In “create” young ladies from comparing Ross’s ability to take on a range of mate- ghetto teens, like some innerrial, Dave Marsh in Rolling Stone said that “Ronstadt, city Eliza Doolittles. We were Muldaur, Raitt, and the rest simply could not handle already ladies who had been the material simultaneously so mature and overtly sen- brought up right. sual” (Marsh 1976). Which only proves what is easy to forget between hits: Diana Ross is a popular music artist of the most regal kind. After appearing in two ﬁlms, Ross made yet another silver screen appearance before the decade was over. She starred as Dorothy in a movie-musical remaking of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz called The Wiz, which itself had been a Broadway musical ﬁrst. The idea of the ﬁlm, with its memorable line uttered by the displaced Dorothy “there’s no place like home,” resonated with Ross, who had moved from Los Angeles to New York; The Wiz sets the story in the inner city. Ross’s marriage was failing—she was caught between her husband and Gordy in a triangular battle. Her husband tried to show her the ways in which Motown was keeping her in the dark about certain aspects of her career, such as her ﬁnances, and that Gordy, although a smart man, could sometimes be controlling. The ﬁlm, directed by Sidney Lumet and written by Joel Schumacher, allowed her to divert her attention from her life to her work. When it was released in fall 1978, The Wiz did not fare terribly well at the box ofﬁce. After the ﬁlm, which Ross described as more creatively and personally rewarding than ﬁnancially, was completed, she took stock of her life and realized she needed to make changes. Other players at Motown were doing her thinking for her: This consisted of larger tasks such as buying her home and paying her taxes to mundane, day-to-day details such as telling her where she needed to go and what she needed to do and when. It was creatively stultifying. It’s My Turn: The 1980s and Life After Motown During the late 1970s, Ross’s solo singing career did not have the same largerthan-life aspect and success as the earlier part of the decade. Her 1979 album The Boss was her ﬁrst gold release for Motown (sales before 1977 on Motown were not audited by the RIAA). As the decade turned over, she would release one more album, Diana, on Motown’s label in 1980, her ﬁrst platinum album. In Ross’s autobiography she said she did not leave Motown because she was “upset or angry or hurt. I left because I was growing as a person and it was time to move on” (Ross 1993, 201). The last few hit songs on Motown helped set the tone for a new phase; she wanted a new sound. Working with songwriters Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards on the song “I’m Coming Out,” an upbeat, anthemic song, helped ease the transition. With its ragged

410

Women Icons of Popular Music

guitar line in the beginning, jazzy horn section, and self-afﬁrming lyrics, the song peaked in the Top 10 in both the black and pop charts, and also became something of an anthem for the gay community. Indeed, —Designer Bob Mackie on the song’s lyrics, and even just the declaration of its Ross’s fashion sense. title, feels prescient, strong, and unequivocal, appropriate for an artist entering a new stage of her career despite the fact that the song was released on Motown. Before that song though, Ross had a hit with “Upside Down,” a smart, funky pop song about a relationship turning someone upside down, which many people inferred was about her situation with Motown. The song was a number one hit on both the R&B and pop charts. Both songs came from the album Diana and were written by Rodgers-Edwards. In fact, all of the songs on that record were written by them. The record was a number one black album and a number two pop album on the charts. Another autobiographical song was released shortly thereafter, the sweeping, dramatic ballad “It’s My Turn,” which was written by Michael Masser and Carol Bayer Sager. The song was the title track from the 1980 ﬁlm of the same name. Here, too, the content ﬁnds Ross declaring in the chorus “It’s my turn to see what I can see/I hope you’ll understand, this time’s just for me.” It, too, was a hit. Ross joined Lionel Richie on a ballad duet for the title track of the ﬁlm Endless Love, and the song was her last hit for Motown. It remained in the number one spot for nine weeks and garnered a Record of the Year Grammy Award nomination. Although it lost, it is one of her most recognizable love songs. Ross left for RCA in a groundbreaking seven-year, $20 million deal. Her ﬁrst release for the new label was Why Do Fools Fall in Love. Released in summer 1981, it became a top ﬁve album for R&B chart and peaked at ﬁfteen on the pop album chart. Ross produced the album and the title track, which was a remake of a 1956 smash Frankie Lymon hit and which was a smash for her, too, peaking in the Top 10 in three separate charts. The harder-edged single “Mirror Mirror” came out later and had high chart action in 1982 on pop and R&B charts, hitting number eight and number two respectively. The album was a great start to a new label. Ross followed it up with Silk Electric in 1982, which she also produced. The album features contribution from Michael Jackson, who was in the beginning stages of his solo career; the pair had worked together on The Wiz. The sultry, in-your-face song “Muscles,” written and produced by Michael Jackson, ﬁnds Ross declaring that she is rejecting ideas of what makes a man attractive, declaring that he must be beautiful and have muscles. Don Shewey wrote in Rolling Stone that it was “a modern pop masterpiece,” for the way the instrumentation had “teasingthreatening touches” (Shewey 1982). The album’s entire production was elaborate and the arrangements intricate. According to All Music Guide’s Ron Wynn, the arrangements were “designed to accent the carefully calculated

I always wondered where goddesses came from. I guess it must be Detroit.

Diana Ross

pauses, sighs, and coos, and the compositions more suggestive in their lyrics than convincing or compelling.” In her subsequent 1983 release Ross failed to produce Top 10 singles, but Swept Away in 1984 helped her rebound by going gold. The title track was a dance hit produced by Daryl Hall of the rock-soul band Hall & Oates. Some of the more memorable moments include her duet with Spanish singer Julio Iglesias “All of You” and the bittersweet, poignant “Missing You,” which was written by Lionel Richie about the recently deceased Marvin Gaye. Two more albums for RCA were less than stellar— Eaten Alive and Red Hot Rhythm and Blues; the latter was her last for the label. Some of her trouble during these years, Taraborrelli said, can be attributed her reaction to years of working under someone else’s control at Motown: At RCA, she sought control over every aspect of her work, sometimes rankling executives and label bosses. She returned to the Motown label as a partowner and an artist once again and made 1989’s Workin’ Overtime, which was her ﬁrst Motown release in eight years. The title track was a success on the R&B charts, but like much of her material in the late 1980s, it did not really connect with pop audiences. Its failure marked the beginning of a downturn in her career. During the 1980s there were two signiﬁcant developments that would personally impact Ross’s life. In 1984, she met Norwegian businessman Arne Naess when she was on a trip to the Bahamas and married him in 1986. After more than ten years of marriage and the addition of two sons to Ross’s three daughters, the couple would ultimately part ways in 1999. Another signiﬁcant development of the 1980s was the publication of Mary Wilson’s autobiography Dreamgirl: My Life As a Supreme, which greatly upset Ross. Wilson took the name of her book from the Broadway musical that loosely detailed many aspects of the Motown years including the Supremes. Ross publicly had taken issue with the show. Dreamgirls ran from December 1981 to August 1985, earning six Tony Awards in 1982. The story has been so compelling and has proven its staying power so that Bill Condon, who had success with the ﬁlm adaptation of the musical Chicago, directed the 2006 ﬁlm release. Later Years: The Diva Slows Down When the 1990s arrived, Ross’s recording proliﬁc output slowed down considerably, and she released The Force Behind the Power, produced by Peter Asher, in 1991, followed by Take Me Higher in 1995 and 1999’s Everyday is a New Day, all of which fared much better on the U.K. and European charts than either the pop or R&B charts in the United States. Ross attempted to reunite the Supremes and tour with Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong, but neither would participate because the pay they would receive paled in comparison to Ross’s fees. Instead, Ross replaced them with two late-period Supremes, Lynda Laurence and Scherrie Payne, and the three toured a handful

411

412

Women Icons of Popular Music

of dates with the Return to Love tour. However, sales were not remarkable, so the show was cancelled after only nine dates. Ross and Motown parted ways yet again in 2002. Late that same year, Ross was arrested in Tucson, Arizona, for drunk driving. She remained intermittently active, appearing with Rod Stewart on “I Got a Crush On You” on his Great American Songbook record on 2005. Motown released a collection of Ross’s jazz standards that had been shelved for over thirty years called Blue, and it hit number two on the jazz album chart. In early 2007, Ross released her ﬁrst new album since 1999, I Love You. Gavin Edwards of Rolling Stone said she sounded “oddly subdued,” and the material runs the gamut from The Beatles’s “I Will” to “This Magic Moment” by The Drifters and the 1980s hit song “Take my Breath Away” by Berlin, popularized by the ﬁlm Top Gun. He suggested that a few diva tantrums might have made things better and that perhaps the album’s release was designed to cash in on the renewed interest in the group thanks to the release of the ﬁlm Dreamgirls. The performance is indeed reigned in and composed, but Ross still smolders on “I Want You.” A tour of North America and the United Kingdom was launched in support of the album. “For me, every song on my new album is a positive afﬁrmation of love and this is the message I want to bring with the concerts,” she said (EMI 2007). Regardless of any critical misgivings, the record debuted at thirty-two on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart the week it was released and has fared well with Internet sales, showing that she still has a legion of adoring fans. Ross had her ﬁrst Top 40 U.S. pop album since 1984’s Swept Away.

MISSION, MOTIVATION, PROCESS Personal anecdotes from associates and friends revealed that when it comes to Diana Ross, a diva was perhaps always in the making even from her childhood. Arguments about her purported Machiavellian tendencies aside, it is hard to argue with the fact that her image and her rise to fame emphasize toughness, ambition, and a single-minded focus on success. Although she grew up in a mostly supportive environment, stories about her relationship with her father paint a picture of a young girl who wanted nothing more than her father’s approval; it has been suggested that Berry Gordy, who was ﬁfteen years older than her, represented something of a father ﬁgure to Ross. She has had something to prove, yes, but ultimately, she did not falter in her own belief in herself. In one of her two autobiographies, Secrets of a Sparrow, Ross detailed the impact her mother’s singing voice had on her growing up. Her mother used to sing a spiritual called “His Eye Is On the Sparrow,” whose message suggests that a person should be happy because God is watching over her. When Ross was a child, she said she was “mama’s little sparrow” because she was “quick and thin and loved to sing” (Ross 1993, 68) and that her mother’s singing

Diana Ross

voice gave her goose bumps. Through this anecdote one can sense that Ross equated singing with freedom but also with the warmth of home and that feeling of freedom made her happy. She viewed the song as a prayer and as a gift that her mother gave her—the ability to protect oneself from life’s difﬁculties and disappointments and then learn from those experiences. “I’ve always looked at the more positive side of things. All the pain I’ve had in my life, I’ll hold onto it for a second and then I’ll let it go. I really try to let go of all the negativity and leave the rest up to God” (Ross 1993, 68). Ross said she does not follow any special procedures for her voice and that singing has always been “a natural gift for me. I try not to put too many restrictions on it” (Ross 1993, 163). She wrote in her autobiography that she trusts her voice will take her where she needs to go and that before a show she tries to remain relaxed and in good physical shape, which can be a challenge for a busy performer. She focuses on breathing properly and does some vocal warm-ups before a show—behaviors that are not out of the ordinary for a singer. For the ﬁrst phase of her career—her years with Motown—Ross worked primarily as a singer and actress. Even though she was a stranger to acting in a ﬁlm or in a theatrical role, her wealth of experience with the Supremes taught her poise, discipline, and the capacity to dig into her own emotional reservoir. When it was time to prepare for the role of Billie Holiday, Ross knew she would never sound like the singer, but instead she listened to her records, read about her, and tried to understand some of the artist’s life and pain to bring some honesty to the role. Many critics objected to the choice of Ross, whose life did not resemble that of Holiday’s beyond perhaps the fact that they were both African American female singers. Ross had sung some standards with the Supremes, so it was not as if she were a stranger to that type of material, but she found her connections to Holiday, and the experience proved cathartic. “What was most important then, and continues to be with any kind of music I’m doing, is that I need to ﬁnd identiﬁcation for myself with each song, something that makes the song come alive in my own experience” (Ross 1993, 167–168). Later, when working on The Wiz, she drew on her work with Lady Sings the Blues, even going so far as to suggest that the process of work—and the material itself—was like therapy. “I can sing it out really loud, from my toes to the top of my head, and then I can just get over whatever is bothering me” (Ross 1993, 170). She brought other aspects of her talent and interests to her ﬁlm work, especially with 1975’s Mahogany; Ross was thrilled to be able to design all the clothes for the character she played, Tracy Chambers, starring opposite Billy Dee Williams. After The Wiz, she started her own production company to ensure that there would be enough good roles for black women. In 1981, Ross formed her own management ﬁrm, RTC Management Corporation, named after the ﬁrst initial of each of her three daughters, along with Anaid Films, Ross Records,

413

414

Women Icons of Popular Music

and Ross Publishing Company, based in New York City. Toward the end of her years with Motown, she was starting to become more interested in producing and arranging, showing a desire to branch out beyond what was initially expected of her. In an interview with O’Connell Driscoll in Rolling Stone, she explained that she was walking around with a notebook, writing down things she overheard. “All the time I get ideas for things I want to do. You know, like a song, or an idea for a movie; something like that” (Driscoll 1977).

LEGACY AND OTHER INTERESTS Ross’s musical legacy is enormous. Without her success early with the Supremes, the girl groups of the 1960s would have arguably been less formidable a force in the music business. Motown would not have had the inﬂuence it bore on a generation of artists, male or female. And the concept of a girl group would have had the same power, commercial and critical, that it eventually wound up having (see sidebar). In 1986, Ross traveled with her husband and daughters to Kenya to visit friends of her husband. It was not her ﬁrst trip to Africa, but for her daughters, it was a maiden voyage. Ross was determined to educate her children about their heritage and infuse their identity with a sense of pride. They spent time with Samburu tribe, whose young girls adorned Ross with face painting and beads, and with the Masai. From her travels, Ross has amassed a collection of African art. Ross is also devoted to children—not just African American children but all American children. She laments that her own children have been growing up in a difﬁcult time in which racial tension is high. Ross has also been committed to hiring women, African Americans, and minorities for projects to ensure that qualiﬁed people are getting opportunities. Throughout her career she has been fortunate to succeed in a difﬁcult world in which she said there is still hate—she does not take anything for granted. Still, music has power to unite, and Ross is aware of that. “When I am up there on stage singing and I see the faces in the audience and touch their hands—and I hope their hearts—I realize more than ever that we’re all just people” (Ross 1993, 79). Ross is devoted to her children Rhonda, Tracee, Chudney, Ross, and Evan, and in 1993, the same year she published her memoirs, she wrote a children’s book, When You Dream. She is aware that her success was made possible by the success other trailblazing African American women performers, such as opera singer Marian Anderson, Lena Horne, Ethel Waters, Dorothy Dandridge, Josephine Baker, along with Sarah Vaughan, Bessie Smith, Ella Fitzgerald and, of course, Billie Holiday. Ross has secured her place in this lineage, and she has continued to make possible the careers of strong, ambitious African American and minority

Diana Ross

The 1960s: The Rise of the Girl Groups The early 1960s in Detroit was an auspicious time if you were young, African American, and musically talented. Ambition helped, too; it set Diana Ross and the Supremes apart and kept Motown label honcho Berry Gordy’s attention. But during their rise to fame, other girl groups were starting to make a significant dent in the pop charts. The teenaged Marvellettes became Motown’s first successful female vocal group with the number one hit “Please Mr. Postman,” and they went on to earn nearly twenty Top 40 R&B singles and ten Top 40 pop singles during their eight years with the label. Martha and the Vandellas, led by Martha Reeves, would stay on the charts for ten years with hits such as “(Love is Like A) Heat Wave” and “Dancing in the Street,” which charted between 1964 and 1967. Elsewhere on other labels, the Ronettes, the Shangri-Las, the Cookies, the Chiffons, and the Crystals had hits with songs written and/or produced by other songwriters and producers, including Phil Spector, Gerry Goffin and Carole King, and Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann. Although female singing groups were not new—the Andrews Sisters from the 1940s, for example, are the most notable progenitors—their success in the 1960s irrevocably changed the landscape of popular music. The girl group has been a powerful force through the years, whether it’s the Pointer Sisters, Bananarama, the Go-Gos, the Bangles, Salt-N-Pepa, En Vogue, Wilson Phillips, the Spice Girls, or Destiny’s Child. When these groups break up, many of the members then release solo albums or go onto other careers in music. In the 2000s, groups like the Pipettes, the Pussycat Dolls, and the Raveonettes emerged as clever, ironic, and self-conscious incarnations of the 1960s girl group motif. All groups, however, owe a great musical debt to the 1960s.

women, whether it is Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, or Mary J. Blige, or the younger generation of singers such as Alicia Keys, Jill Scott, Vivian Green, Lizz Wright, or Beyoncé Knowles, whose voices are strong and clear and whose experiences show they are in touch with their pain and their uniqueness and can even celebrate their struggles. She acknowledged as much. “One of the things I am most proud of is the fact that the Supremes were trailblazers, both as women and as black artists” (Ross 1993, 130).

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Meet the Supremes. Motown, 1962 Where Did Our Love Go? Motown, 1964 I Hear A Symphony. Motown, 1966 Supremes A Go-Go. Motown, 1966

415

416

Women Icons of Popular Music

Diana Ross and the Supremes Greatest Hits. Motown, 1967 Diana Ross and the Supremes. The #1’s. Motown, 2004

Solo Diana Ross. Motown, 1970 Lady Sings the Blues (Motion Picture Soundtrack). Motown, 1972 Diana Ross Live at Caesars Palace. Motown, 1973 Diana and Marvin. Motown, 1973 Diana Ross. Motown, 1976 Diana. Motown, 1980 Why Do Fools Fall in Love? RCA, 1981 Silk Electric. RCA, 1982 Diana Ross Anthology. Motown, 1983 Swept Away. RCA, 1984 Blue. Motown, 2006 I Love You. EMI, 2007

FURTHER READING Bowman, Rob. “Diana Ross.” Grove Music Online. Available at www.grovemusic .com. Accessed February 13, 2008. British Broadcasting Company. “Diana Ross: ‘Mother’s Touch.’ ” BBC online. Available at news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/456695.stm. Davis, Stephen. “Lady Sings the Blues Soundtrack. Review.” Rolling Stone 130 (March 15, 1973). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artist/dianaross/ albums/album/315020/review/5941222/lady_sings_the_blues_sdtk. Edwards, Gavin. “I Love You.” Rolling Stone online (February 6, 2007). Available at www.rollingstone.com/artists/dianaross/albums/album/12989663/review/ 13385161/i_love_you. EMI Records. Press Release. Available online at emicatalogmarketing.com/dianaross/ DianaRoss_I_Love_You_Tour_PR.pdf. Landau, Jon. “Diana and Marvin. Review.” Rolling Stone 149 (December 6, 1973). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/dianaross/albums/album/134408/ review/5940448/diana__marvin. Marsh, Dave. “Diana Ross review.” Rolling Stone 212 (May 6, 1976). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/110030/review/6210783?utm_source= Rhapsody&utm_medium=CDreview. Moon, Tom. “The Blue Album.” Rolling Stone online (June 26, 2006). Available at www.rollingstone.com/artists/dianaross/albums/album/10513417/review/ 10681193/the_blue_album. Ross, Diana. Secrets of a Sparrow: Memoirs. New York: Villard, 1993. Ross, Diana. Going Back. New York: Rizzoli/Universe, 2002. Shewey, Don. “Silk Electric.” Rolling Stone 383 (November 25, 1982). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/dianaross/albums/album/216147/review/5944538/ silk_electric.

Diana Ross

Taraborrelli, J. Randy. Diana Ross: A Biography. New York: Citadel Press, 2007. Vining, Mark. “Touch Me in the Morning. Review.” Rolling Stone 144 (September 27, 1973). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/dianaross/albums/ album/215342/review/5945606/touch_me_in_the_morning. Wynn, Ron. “Silk Electric Review.” All Music Guide. Available online at www.allmusic .com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=&sql=10:09fwxqt5ldte.

417

Courtesy of Photofest

Patti Smith

420

Women Icons of Popular Music

OVERVIEW

Rock ’n’ roll drew me from my mother’s hand and led me to experience.

More than any other artist of her generation, Patti Smith embodies a downtown New York City aesthetic sensibility. She is an artist/singer as poet, one whose integrity is unquestioned and whose ambitious, unconventional approach to music took her through various phases, genres, and sounds. Smith started as a painter and transitioned to poetry to playwright to songwriter, although not necessarily in that order. She trusted her muse and believed in the power of one’s creativity to transcend and inspire great works. Her longtime association with the underground rock music scene of the 1970s and the world of poetry—she has published several volumes—make her an artist with a capital A, one for whom commercial gain is secondary to the message and medium that guide her. Her inﬂuence is perhaps more a testament to her role than anything that can be quantiﬁed in terms of record sales or commercial acclaim. Smith’s most well-known songs include “Gloria,” “Rock N Roll Nigger,” “Because the Night,” “Dancing Barefoot,” and “People Have the Power.” Along with the band Television, Patti Smith was one of the artists who helped put the underground New York rock club CBGB on the national radar for punk rock lovers. CBGB hosted a variety of performers such as downtown New York artist/poets like Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed; the Patti Smith Group was widely referred to as the heir to the Velvet Underground, the arty rock band that had received cult acclaim through the mid- to late 1960s. Unlike Nico, the Velvet Underground singer who cut a sylph-like ﬁgure with her long blonde hair and heavy-rimmed eyes, Smith adopted a more androgynous persona with tight dark pants, white shirts, and skinny ties. As a singer and performer, Smith was a passionate but an androgynous ﬁgure, one for whom gender and femaleness are a matter of accidental fact and not something to exploit or even consider. First and foremost, Smith identiﬁes herself as an artist, and her insistence on such makes her an icon because it takes gender off the table. Smith’s declaration, however, made it easier for other artists of all genres to express themselves without concern for such matters. Furthermore, the fact that she was willing to disengage herself from scrutiny made her all the more noticeable in an era when Debbie Harry of Blondie was self-consciously playing with ideas of being a sex object. Smith did not believe in these sorts of postures. Indeed, an argument can be made that perhaps Smith felt more comfortable playing with the boys than exploiting her sexuality in a stereotypical way. Her band has always been comprised of all men, she wrote a play with Sam Shepard, and wrote a song for the band Blue Oyster Cult. Her heroes most conspicuously have been men—Dylan, Rimbaud, the Rolling Stones—but she admitted in a candid interview in the early 1970s that there is a feminine inﬂuence in her work that she described as part of a self-feeding circle. “Most of my poems are written to women because

Patti Smith

women are most inspiring. Who are most artists? Men. Who do they get inspired by? Women” (McNeil 2006, 114). Smith remains something of a puzzle to rock critics, feminists, and scholars, who are not sure whether to vilify her for disengaging with her gender and refusing to be viewed as an icon of female empowerment, or embrace her for her willful disregard for sexual and cultural conventions—looking and acting feminine—as they pertain to women in rock music. Still, she remains separate from the ideas of feminism and invites criticism for her admitted obsession with men, which begs the question as to whether or not she permits herself to be objectiﬁed or if her acknowledgment of that process is, in itself, a counterintuitive act of selfempowerment. “I fall in love with men and they take me over. I ain’t no women’s lib chick. So I can’t write about a man because I’m under his thumb” (Bockris and Bayley 1999, 88). Although Smith is a solo artist, collaboration has been an important part of her success, and her inﬂuences are apparent. Early on, she drew comparisons to Bob Dylan for her literate lyrics, and she has worked, too, with black-andwhite photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, who often photographed Smith and speciﬁcally shot the image for her landmark, breakthrough album Horses. Mapplethorpe was her boyfriend for a while and remained a lifelong friend; they continued to encourage and inspire each other right until his death in 1989. She was married to musician Fred “Sonic” Smith, formerly of the MC5s and whose last name she coincidentally shared, who died in 1994. When she and Smith married, she moved to the Midwest and virtually dropped out of the recording business for a period of time, further contributing to her mythological, enigmatic reputation. Some fans and feminists thought she was dropping out and becoming a housewife, but time would prove that supposition incorrect. Smith’s career is noteworthy because she has not received a Grammy Award, and her output is less than proliﬁc with fewer than a dozen studio releases to her name over the course of her thirty-year career. Nevertheless, and perhaps to some extent because of her itinerant and iconoclastic approach, she is frequently cited as an inﬂuence by scores of singers, male and female, and artists. She was a nominee for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, an honor that sat uneasily on her conscience—so much so that she wrote an editorial about it in the New York Times. Smith’s work has been included in such diverse publications as Lester Bangs Reader and the Oxford Book of American Poetry. She has written an introduction to a collection of poetry by Beat writer Gregory Corso, and her work has been included in a book by actor and noted Buddhist Richard Gere. Her own Web site is a testament to her unorthodox, singular impact. Although it is afﬁliated with her record label, it looks nothing like a standard issue artist Web site. There are no ﬂashy graphics, and there are simple categories for her own reﬂections—a blog of sorts—along with a tour schedule and other artist information. Even Smith’s nod to music business and twenty-ﬁrst-century conventions—a namesake Web site—is rendered in an unconventional fashion.

421

422

Women Icons of Popular Music

EARLY YEARS Smith was born in Chicago in 1946 and is the eldest child of Beverly and Grant Smith. Her dad was a factory worker and her mother was a housewife but also a singer. They lived on the South Side of Chicago, moved to north Philadelphia when she was about four, and stayed there until she was about eight years old. By that time, her brother Todd and sister Linda were born, and a few years later, the family moved to South Jersey, where sister Kimberly was born in 1958. She described herself as “very gawky and homely—real nervous and sickly and all that. But I was always happy” (Bockris and Bayley 1999, 20). When she was teased, she would make a joke about it. “I was the class clown—I didn’t care, because I knew that time would do right by me” (24). When Smith was seven years old she was stricken with scarlet fever, which provided her with intense hallucinations that would later serve her well as a creative person. At the time though, it reinforced whatever difference she felt from others her age, and it made her hair fall out. The family was so poor that they could not afford to ﬁx her lazy eye so she wore a patch, and her sister and brother were hospitalized with malnutrition. On reﬂection, Smith said she knew she was destined for bigger and better things. The novel Little Women inspired Smith as a young girl—she admitted that she wanted to be Jo March, the smart, tomboyish daughter who became a writer and helped the family out of dire ﬁnancial straits and who, with her sisters, would perform for the family. So Smith started to write. By her own accounts, Smith was unusual, imaginative, rebellious, and inquisitive. “Even as a child, I always used to imagine that I was being secretly ﬁlmed. I’d pretend Bergman was shooting a movie. Or one of the saints, in shooting the whole earth, was doing a zoom on me” (Bockris and Bayley 1999, 19). Her parents inspired and supported her development. She described her father as someone who was spiritual and intellectual but disinterested. He would work hard at his job and then spend his spare time reading about topics that interested him. He was also an atheist and the one who ﬁrst exposed her to museums. Smith credited him with her love of reading and her early desire to be an artist. Her mother, on the other hand, was a devoted Jehovah’s Witness, and from her Smith learned about prayer. Her mother was also the one who introduced Smith to music, speciﬁcally jazz, opera, and classical works. Her parents both were open-minded and raised the children without prejudice, which was relatively unusual in the 1950s. She dated someone African American in high school, and her parents’ home became a haven for all sorts of interesting youth. As she grew up, established institutions—from religion to the construction of gender—were equally up for her reevaluation. As a teenager, she was a typical misﬁt, but the poetry of the Beat poets and rock and roll’s soul music from James Brown to the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan were her inspirations and companions. Smith idolized sexy female stars like Jeanne Moreau and Anouk Aimée in La Dolce Vita as readily as Joan

Patti Smith

of Arc. She joined a jazz club, got kicked out of a club where John Coltrane, Elvin Jones, and McCoy Tyner were playing, and for a period wanted to become a jazz poet. Her aspirations, though, were always larger than her wallet, and she was keenly aware of class limitations. After graduating high school in 1964, Smith worked during that summer in a children’s toy factory. The experience was so negative that it was hard to shake: It inspired her ﬁrst punk record, “Piss Factory,” as a result of an incident in which co-workers pushed her head into toilet bowl full of urine. It was a miserable job, but it reinforced her artistic desires. One day during lunch she walked to a bookstore and discovered the book Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud. Although she didn’t know anything about him, she soon became captivated by his progressive ideas about women, creativity, and artists in general. Smith became entranced by the idea of becoming an artist’s mistress. As much as she loved music, Smith wasn’t thinking in terms of pursuing it; her ﬁrst love was still art. She went to Glassboro State College under the guise of becoming an art teacher because her family could not afford to send her to art school. The students were disappointingly middlebrow, and the school did not approve of her imaginative teaching style. However, she learned as much as she could about writing and reading even though academically she was not successful. Smith spent only two years at Glassboro: She dropped out during the summer between sophomore and junior years when she became pregnant. Knowing how difﬁcult it would be to pursue her art as a young unwed mother, she gave the baby up for adoption after its birth in February 1967. The music of the Rolling Stones helped her through the postpartum period. A few months later, she moved to New York with just a suitcase, art supplies, and $16 in her possession. The move changed her life irrevocably. She stayed with some friends and worked at a Brentano’s bookstore in Midtown. Instead of hanging out downtown at Cooper Union, St. Mark’s Poetry Project, or Max’s Kansas City, which was the watering hole popular with artists and where the subcultural element was ﬂourishing, Smith went to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. While she was trying to ﬁnd a friend of hers, she happened to encounter art student Robert Mapplethorpe, who worked at another Brentano’s branch. They became intimately involved nearly immediately, even though Mapplethorpe most clearly identiﬁed himself as gay. They moved into an apartment in Brooklyn, set up separate workspaces for themselves, and hardly spent any time with other people at ﬁrst. Her college friend Janet Hamill said that both Mapplethorpe and Smith wanted to be celebrities. The two were soul mates creatively, but romantically much was missing. She left the relationship for a while, and he threatened to become gay. He moved to San Francisco for a bit, and when he returned, he was out of the closet. Feeling enraged and betrayed, Smith moved her things into Janet Hamill’s apartment in the Village. Shortly thereafter, in 1969, she moved to Paris with her sister, busked for a while, and, as she said, looked for Rimbaud’s

423

424

Women Icons of Popular Music

ghost and to ﬁnd herself as an artist. When she returned, her words were coming more easily than her images. She and Mapplethorpe, however, were inextricably bound by their creativity and their ambition, and they soon moved into the Chelsea Hotel, which was a haven for starving artists because the owner would take work as collateral for rent. Her career, once they were established at the Chelsea, took off in earnest. She kept writing and even worked as a rock critic for a while. Smith also was involved in several underground efforts such as appearing in a play in New York called Femme Fatale at the Theater of the Ridiculous alongside some of Andy Warhol’s stars and in the play Island. The musician Bobby Neuwirth encouraged Smith’s poetry and writing early on and introduced her to the crowd of musicians including Janis Joplin, Edgar and Johnny Winter, and Kris Kristofferson. The scene at the Chelsea was a revolving door of artists, musicians, writers, and other gadﬂies swapping stories and inspiration. She met ﬁlmmaker and folk music collector Harry Smith and poet-writer (and heroin addict) Jim Carroll, who moved in with Smith and Mapplethorpe after the pair moved out of the Chelsea Hotel. Additionally, she encountered another important ﬁgure in Sam Shepard, and she collaborated with him (personally and professionally) on a play called Cowboy Mouth in 1971.

CAREER PATH The Prolific, Early Years in New York City When Smith read her work at the St. Mark’s Poetry Project in February 1971, her audience was literally a Who’s Who of the New York artistic scene, ranging from members of Andy Warhol’s Factory to musicians such as Edgar Winter and Bob Dylan, to rock critics and the esteemed Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. Despite the fact that she was applauded loudly and appreciatively, to cope with her paranoia about performance she kept in mind one of her idols, the nineteenth-century French poet Arthur Rimbaud. When he disapproved of another poet’s reading, he would urinate on the manuscript. Her debut was comprised of a meditation on Bertolt Brecht, crime, and Babel. Her delivery was a rhythmic and passionate performance that engaged the audience with her energy. Photographer Lee Black Childers remembered that her infectiousness was unusual at the time—most poets at St. Mark’s read their work, and the audience was left with a feeling of its inscrutability. Childers noted that Smith’s work was a force to be reckoned with; the audience had no choice, due to her style, delivery, and pure energy, but to respond. Smith did not necessarily think her debut was the start of something signiﬁcant. “I didn’t think I was all of a sudden going to start doing poetry readings or make a record and have a rock ’n’ roll band” (Bockris and Bayley, 1999). But that—and more—is what happened.

Patti Smith

Smith’s career began to evolve organically from the Lower Manhattan artrock literary scene and its colorful inhabitants with fuel from her creativity and opportunism. On that 1971 date, she was backed by Lenny Kaye, a rock writer and guitarist, and gradually more players emerged, including pianist Richard Sohl. Those years in the early 1970s before her ofﬁcial signing to a record label were nonetheless productive—Smith was laying the groundwork for what would become her debut and starting to get attention. She performed in plays, wrote for some rock magazines, and continued reading her poetry, even winning over the poetry scene in London in 1972. Naturally, two books of her poetry were published: Seventh Heaven and Kodak both in 1972. When she started writing lyrics for the band Blue Oyster Cult, she and its keyboardist Allen Lanier became extremely close, and Smith learned the basics of the music business through him. In 1973, Smith started performing more regularly with Lenny Kaye and added piano player Richard Sohl a year later. These early days of her career were characterized by a mix of her poetry (the inﬂuences of Beat Generation writers are apparent), music, improvised spoken word, and covers of rock and roll oldies. She was developing a sensibility, an aesthetic, that would inform her entrance to the rest of the musical world, above the underground of New York’s Lower Manhattan. Smith established a discipline with her writing and, in early 1973, hired manager Jane Friedman, who helped Smith get a gig as an opening act for the punk rock band New York Dolls. Friedman also helped her build on the momentum of her career and to ﬁne tune aspects of her performance, especially how to handle the stage when audiences became vociferous or abusive. By the end of the year, her third volume of poetry, Witt, was published by the Gotham Book Mart. Critics were hailing her poems and her performanceand-music readings, and she was garnering rave, if surprised and/or shocked, reviews from writers from the underground publication The Village Voice and the more highbrow Oxford Literary Review. Many writers describe Mapplethorpe as her muse; his unconditional support certainly bolstered her and helped make her career possible. He gave Smith $1000 for studio time, and she and Kaye recorded at Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland Studio in Manhattan. Smith chose the two songs “Hey Joe” and “Piss Factory,” which chronicles her time working in that South Jersey toy factory. Tom Verlaine of Television played guitar on both tracks, and Lenny Kaye produced it; Smith contributed artwork to the record sleeve. Soon after she and Kaye added Ivan Kral, who played guitar and bass. Smith started playing in CBGB in early 1975, adding drummer Jay Dee Daughtrey. Critics such as John Rockwell and Stephen Holden of the New York Times were becoming vocal supporters. Their gigs caught the attention of Clive Davis of Arista Records, who had been escorted to a show by Lou Reed of the Velvet Underground. Smith was offered a record deal worth $750,000 for seven albums, but she demanded and received creative control—a rarity, especially for someone whose commercial

425

426

Women Icons of Popular Music

worth as a recording artist was largely untested. Ex-Velvet Underground member John Cale produced the record. All Music Guide called the debut Horses “[t]he ﬁrst art-punk album.” Radio, of course, did not really touch the record—not an uncommon situation for some artists from this time period and this genre—but somehow it made it into the top ﬁfty anyway. Rolling Stone called it “an original mixture of exhortatory rock and roll, Smith’s poetry, vocal mannerisms inspired by Mick Jagger and Jim Morrison and the band’s energetically rudimentary playing” (George-Warren, Romanowski, and Pareles 2001). Smith told Rolling Stone that she just wanted a technical person to produce the record, but “instead, I got a total maniac artist. I went to pick out an expensive watercolor painting, and instead I got a mirror” (Rolling Stone 1997). Smith’s ﬁrst track on Horses is a cover of the Van Morrison song “Gloria,” rendered in an unusual manner. It starts off slowly, and as a piano plays gently, she begins the song with the statement “Jesus died for someone’s sins, but not mine.” It is an uncompromising way to begin an album, and the song’s energy slowly builds as guitar and drums are added. The song crescendos into ragged, blues-punk riffs, over which Smith indulges in her incantatory singing style (the bold opening lyric was often quoted in articles about her). The nine-minute epically proportioned “Land” contained three separate parts—Horses, Land of Thousand Dances (which is a cover song), and La Mer. In the “Horses” section she describes a boy who is thrust up against a locker and then feels as though he is being surrounded by horses. The song’s protagonist seems to experience a vision, complete with dancing and violence, as Smith offers the recurring refrain that “there is no land but the land” and “there is no sea but the sea.” The three movements of the song “Land” demonstrate what would soon become known as her unique sound: It’s characterized by a slowly building momentum, riffs and motifs that repeat, and lyrics that are sung-spoke with an increasing urgency as the song progresses. “Land” begins with one simple image, takes the listener on a journey, and ends with another image. It’s a sprawling exploration of language and imagination, framed as a dream; it is one of her most well-known pieces, and its meaning slowly reveals itself on multiple listens. Elsewhere on her debut, this long track is followed by the ballad “Elegie.” Smith and the band toured around the United States in support of the record and were met with sellout audiences and groupies who gave her “drugs and poetry and black leather gloves and stuff like that,” Smith recalled (Bockris and Bayley 1999, 140). When the group was performing in Detroit, Lenny Kaye introduced her to the man who would become her husband (and musical mentor), guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith from the Detroit band MC5. Inspired by meeting him, she wrote “Godspeed” and “25th Floor,” the latter of which would not appear until a couple of albums later in Easter. At the time, he was married, and she was still romantically intertwined with two men. Gradually, over the course of several years, they became closer, thanks to letters and phone calls.

Patti Smith

The follow-up album Radio Ethiopia came in late 1976 after Smith wrestled with writer’s block by buying an electric guitar, hoping it would inspire her. The album’s credit is, for the ﬁrst time, to the Patti Smith Group. Aerosmith producer Jack Douglas was at the helm. Smith wanted a producer who could help the band attain radio airplay and a wider audience. Douglas mixed her voice low and recorded her ﬁrst guitar playing on an album. The songs, speciﬁcally “Ask the Angels,” “Pumping,” and “Distant Fingers,” reﬂect a more cohesive rock band sound, heavy with guitars—a sound that some thought showed that Smith was trying to aim for a more commercial audience. Still, there are more experimental and improvisational moments, such as the tenminute title track that possesses the kind of sustained guitar noise and fuzz that bands such as Radiohead and Sonic Youth would become known for decades later. Critics from places as disparate as the New York Times and New Musical Express both expressed disappointment at the direction Smith took with the record. Dave Marsh, writing in Rolling Stone, said that on this record “Patti Smith lays back, refusing to assert herself as she did on last year’s Horses” and that “Smith seems to lack the direction necessary to live up to her own best ideas” (Marsh 1977). He wrote that the album lacked a certain personal connection that was felt on her ﬁrst album’s songs like “Redondo Beach” and “Kimberly” (1977). Radio Ethiopia did not make as strong an impact as her debut and only peaked at 122 on the pop albums chart. Some might chalk the result up to a sophomore slump, but it illustrates the difﬁculty of following such a singular, unusual debut. Some critics, especially those in England, were more harsh: Punk music in the United Kingdom was a different cultural animal. In the words of one British review of a show in 1976, Smith’s guitar, which she had not really learned how to play, “was toted around the stage as a symbol, nothing more” (Bockris and Bayley 1999, 166). Other writers reported her outrageous behavior during interviews and press conferences. Reportedly, during one particularly explosive conference, she stood up and declared herself a “ﬁeld marshal of rock ’n’ roll. I’m fucking declaring war! My guitar is my machine gun!” (Bockris and Bayley 1999, 166). Smith fell while performing a gig in Florida, breaking two of her vertebrae and several bones in her face, which sidelined her from performing and recording in early 1977. She had trouble walking and trouble with her vision. Recuperation gave her the opportunity to reﬂect, and during this time she wrote her fourth book, Babel, comprised of poetry and prose poems. She dictated her work to her new assistant, Andi Ostrowe, a fan who had contacted her after working for the Peace Corps in Ethiopia. Babel contains a secret, inchoate language that at times reads more like a poet’s journal than a collection of ﬁnished work. Sometimes the poetry is straightforward and visual, as in “Notice,” which declares “all honor goes to the runner who would still seek glory in the heart of failure” (Smith 1978, 13). Other pieces feel disjointed, abstract, and stream-of-consciousness. The reader

427

428

Women Icons of Popular Music

encounters verbiage such as “A salon. A salad and cocaine as the seasoning. The white and impulsive grain that lines the sacristal and sexual throat” (Smith 1978, 16). Babel cannot help but bear the residue of a work that was created during a period of duress and pain, fueled by whatever substances were needed for Smith to cope. After recuperating and spending time working on her poetry, Smith returned to recording and released the album Easter in 1978. By this point she had spent two albums trying to ﬁnd a balance between the demands of art and commerce—a quintessential struggle that many artists experience. Easter feels like a compromise in the best sense of the word, one that balances the pontiﬁcation with the popular; it also shows a group whose musicianship was starting to cohere and improve—the rougher edges of earlier recordings were smoothed out nicely by producer Jimmy Iovine, who had worked with both Bruce Springsteen and John Lennon. The most commercially noteworthy song on the album is her collaboration with Bruce Springsteen “Because the Night.” Springsteen had written the music and lyrics to just the chorus, but the rest of the song was incomplete. In a burst of inspiration, she wrote the lyrics one night when she was waiting for a phone call from Fred. The song came together quickly. “Bruce was right—it was written in my key and it suited my voice perfectly. I knew exactly what to do with it” (Bockris and Bayley 1999, 183–184). The song is an ode to lust and nighttime adult collusions, and although it is one of her more straightforward songs, complete with a guitar solo, lyrics such as “love is an angel disguised as lust” and “love is a banquet on which we feed” were more poetic than most commercial rock audiences were accustomed to. Critics, especially Dave Marsh in Rolling Stone, praised the record. Marsh said that in this song, “Smith stakes out her own turf as the ﬁrst female rock and roller; she doesn’t owe anything to folk music, and very little to blues. Her vocal here is as big and brutal as the music; even its sweetness is nasty, its crudity lovely” (Marsh 1978). Rendered as a ragged ballad, with Smith exorcising the lyrics as though she were possessed by the very emotions of which she sings, the song hit the number thirteen slot on the pop charts and helped Easter peak at number twenty on the pop albums chart. To date, it is her only hit single and it remains a song that is popular for other artists to cover, including the folk-rock group 10,000 Maniacs in 1993. Still, the album contained its gutsy, grittier moments, such as the provocative blues rock song “Rock N Roll Nigger,” in which she appropriated the term as something that could apply to any person who was living, working, or producing something outside the establishment instead of as a pejorative, racist moniker. For example, she remarks that “Jimi Hendrix was a nigger/ Jesus Christ and grandma too/Jackson Pollock was a nigger.” The chorus ﬁnds her repeating that she wants to be outside society. The song was revived many years later and included on the soundtrack to the 1994 ﬁlm Natural Born Killers. Easter also contained the short, Beat poetry–inﬂuenced “Babelogue,”

Patti Smith

429

which featured feverish proclamations such as “as the music gradually kicks in and becomes louder.” Smith Her performance was like a continues her incantations with percussion and pipe surrealistic incantation, the on “Ghost Dance,” which sounds like a forgotten creation of a whole mood . . . George Harrison or John Lennon song from the late she would virtually be 1960s and in which she repeats the phrase “we shall possessed and transported. live again” as though it were a mantra. —Terry Ork Marsh devoted an extensive amount of space to her album in his review, pointing out its inherent contradictions between “Smith’s arrogance and her preaching, between her utter belief in the power of her own will and her absolute certainty that society’s salvation lies in a return to ecstatic ritual surrender” (Marsh 1978). He concluded that “Easter, like the rite on which it is based, can’t be apprehended rationally: you either take it on faith or not at all” (Marsh 1978). Perhaps, though, as the song “Privilege (Set Me Free)” suggests, Smith found some liberation, at least for the moment: The song is the theme to the ﬁlm Privilege, in which the protagonist is a caged rock star who is at the mercy of an unforgiving totalitarian regime. In 1979, she and the group released the album Wave, a sonically polished and more mainstream effort that was produced by Todd Rundgren. Buoyed in part by the success of Easter and its own mystical love song “Dancing Barefoot,” the album peaked at number eighteen on the pop albums chart. “Dancing Barefoot” contained some of her more straightforward imagery and versechorus-verse structure, even though Smith speaks her lyrics as poetry toward the last part of the song. The upbeat love song “Frederick” is an ode to Fred Smith and went to number ninety on the pop singles chart. The song feels so buoyant that it might ﬂoat away; its throwaway lyrics “but tonight on the wings of the dove/up above to the land of love” feel uncharacteristically insipid for Smith. The album, though, was perceived as more religious in its content than previous records, and it would be her last album for nearly a decade. With the beneﬁt of hindsight, songs such as the cynical version of the Chris Hillman/Roger McGuinn song “So You Want to Be (A Rock ’N’ Roll Star)” seem like a kiss-off as she warns “what you pay for these riches and fame/well it’s all a vicious game.” Tom Carson in Rolling Stone warned that “success has encouraged all of this artist’s worst vices—her self-indulgence and her overweening preciousness—and her new record tries to have it both ways: to retain her big, newfound audience, while allowing her taste for arch, artsy self-gloriﬁcation and highfalutin poetic nonsense full rein.” Ultimately, he proclaims it “an interesting failure” (Carson 1979). Exile in Detroit 1980s and the Rebirth of an Artist Smith and Fred Smith had made their connection public in early 1978, and on March 1, 1980, the pair married in a quiet ceremony. After the wedding she

430

Women Icons of Popular Music

went on an extended quasi-hiatus from performing for many years, always refusing to entirely compromise her art or her life, to sacriﬁce one for the sake of the other entirely. The years of touring, performing, answering questions, and being deiﬁed by fans had left her exhausted, and she was happy to have found love and be able to leave the major decisions about her career up to her new husband’s approval. She would only rarely appear in public, and when she did, it was usually locally around their home in Detroit. She and Smith had two children, Jackson Frederick in 1982 and Jesse Paris in 1987. In Fred, Smith found a creative collaborator and a life partner. “He instilled in me conﬁdence and clarity, a calmness that made me believe I could do anything” (Bockris and Bayley 1999, 186). She responded to the criticism that she withdrew to be a housewife by retorting, “I disappeared to be by the side of the man that I loved. It was a sometimes difﬁcult but always honorable position. . . . I learned a lot of things in that process” (Strauss 1995). They wrote songs together, and Fred taught her some chords on the guitar. At times, though, their opposite tendencies caused friction; he was interested in technical perfection whereas she was more concerned with how a song felt. He needed isolation to write, and she craved community. He also reportedly had a drinking problem that was difﬁcult to handle. But throughout the decade, they continued to work together sporadically on material for a new album. She co-wrote the material the for 1988 album Dream of Life with her husband and Jimmy Iovine. Fred played guitar, and Sohl and Daughtery, former members of the Patti Smith Group, also appeared on it. Smith later called the album’s genesis difﬁcult, given the highly creative, demanding nature of the two creative minds controlling the process. Still, she lauded the process, saying it was a true collaboration on all levels, from the musicians to the producer, Jimmy Iovine. During the process of recording, in 1986, she discovered she was pregnant, so recording ceased until after the birth of her second child in 1987. When Mapplethorpe visited to photograph her for the cover, he almost did not recognize her—she looked tired, her hair was streaked with gray, and she seemed to defer to her husband for everything. Her friends reported feeling similarly confused by this new version of Patti Smith. The album’s song “People Have the Power” is an anthemic, empowering tune that recalls the 1960s more than anything she produced in the 1970s. The song was born as a result of Fred saying the phrase to her, followed by “Write it.” Smith stayed home and did not tour to support the record, instead opting to use interviews and publicity to spread her beliefs about how humans have to save the planet, save each other, and give each other hope. The song found radio airplay regardless of the lack of touring, netting her a number nineteen hit on the Mainstream Rock Tracks. It remains one of her more

Physical presentation in performing is more important than what you’re saying . . . but if your quality of intellect is high and your love of audience is evident and you have a strong physical presence, you can get away with anything.

Patti Smith

popular tracks, which she continues to perform in concert and at political rallies. Elsewhere, maternal introspection dominates songs such as “Where Duty Calls” and the lullaby “The Jackson Song.” The relatively tepid commercial reaction to the record was disappointing; perhaps fans were not expecting a New Age mother in the new Patti Smith. Starting soon after the record’s release, however, Smith’s life would change yet again in a dramatic, tragic fashion. In March 1989, Mapplethorpe died from complications from HIV-AIDS. Prior to his passing, he asked Smith to write the introduction to his forthcoming book. His death was followed by the death of former band mate Richard Sohl in June 1990. Smith disappeared again and started to work on a novel and a new book of poems, many of which are reﬂections of her childhood in New Jersey. Woolgathering was published in 1992. In July 1993 she made a rare public appearance at a Central Park Summerstage Concert to read her poetry (including “Piss Factory”) and to perform a few songs a capella, dedicating her appearance to the memory of Sohl and Mapplethorpe. By 1994 she was working on a new album with husband Smith and had published a collection of her poetry called Early Work: 1970–1979 with W.W. Norton. Smith stopped work on the new record when her husband Fred died of a heart attack on Mapplethorpe’s birthday after a period of decline in his health that friends attributed to his heavy drinking. He was only forty-six. A mere month later her brother Todd, who had worked as her road manager, died of a heart attack as well. Smith returned to performing and writing songs—a catharsis of sorts, albeit more public than the privacy of her poetry. For the ﬁrst time since her appearance at St. Mark’s Poetry Project in 1971 she read her work again—on New Year’s Day, 1995—and sang the song “Ghost Dance,” about rebirth and resurrection. Poet Allen Ginsberg subsequently invited her to a reading in Ann Arbor. She reformed the band with Kaye, Daughtrey, and New Jersey bassist Tony Shanahan and added the new, young guitarist Oliver Ray. They played small tours, including some dates with Bob Dylan, and wound up in the studio again in 1996 for Gone Again. During her touring with Dylan she was interviewed by the New York Times and seemed resolute in the face of her dramatic life changes; working was providing her with an outlet. “I think right now if all I can do is a be a small reminder to people that in the face of all of our difﬁculties, all of our sorrow, all of our personal tragedies and disappointments, we can still be all right . . . basically, what I’m trying to say is, ‘Well, it’s good to be alive’ ” (Strauss 1995). Gone Again contains many types of tributes and eulogies and includes guest spots from Tom Verlaine, John Cale, and Jeff Buckley. (The young singer Buckley would face his own tragic death not long after.) Critics loved Gone Again’s insistence on the idea that life lives on even after death, as enforced through its songs about mourning, grief, the passage of time, and the possibilities of rebirth. “Summer of Cannibals” was written with her husband, along with the title track. Another remarkable track is “About a Boy,” which

431

432

Women Icons of Popular Music

she wrote about the tragic suicide of singer Kurt Cobain of the Seattle grunge rock band Nirvana. “We wept like parents. We mourned the loss of someone who was so gifted and obviously in so much pain,” she said of her and Fred’s response (Bockris and Bayley 1999, 254). The critics were kind to Smith on the release of Gone Again, with David Fricke in Rolling Stone calling the record “an acutely personal expression in prolonged grief in which surviving the worst of it is possibly by cutting to the heart of it” (Fricke 1996). The year was extremely productive for Smith, who worked through her grief. In addition to her music, she created an epic poem called The Coral Sea, which she dedicated to Mapplethorpe and published in 1996. She even made a guest appearance on the R.E.M. album New Adventures in Hi-Fi on the song “New Test Leper.” Smith continued to write songs, using some chords her husband had taught her prior to his death. In interviews, she seemed to express the idea that her work was a testament to those who had inﬂuenced her; she said that after Fred died she became a better singer. “When he died, I’ve never written so many songs, my voice was strong, I really felt like I was magniﬁed by his spirit” (Pareles 1996). In 1997, Peace and Noise was released, and it felt even darker than Gone Again. Smith barely had time to recover from the grief of her past few years when two of her poet-idols, Allen Ginsberg and Williams S. Burroughs, passed away. Critical response was positive. She even earned a Grammy nomination for the song “1959,” which discusses both the Beat Generation and the Chinese takeover of Tibet, contrasting one with the other as different kinds of social movements and conquests. Ben Ratliff of the New York Times discussed its starkness. “[S]he wants to create songs as plain as rocks, as permanent as ritual chants,” he said, even as she sings about the unsettlingly ﬁnite, impermanent nature of life (Ratliff 1997). Doubleday published a collection of her writing in 1998, this time lyrics, called Patti Smith Complete: Lyrics, Reﬂections & Notes for the Future. In 2000 when she released Gung Ho—an album that is more immediate and aggressive than her previously two introspective works—it seemed that Smith had rediscovered the rest of the world beyond her personal pain. In Rolling Stone, Jon Pareles said that she “belts manifestoes, plunges headlong into love, offers benedictions and hurls herself into history and myth” (Pareles 2000). There is no subject matter that Smith fears. The taut, fast-paced rock song “Glitter in their Eyes” earned Smith another Grammy nomination and featured intricate guitar work from Tom Verlaine. Other guest appearances came from Michael Stipe, the lead singer for R.E.M., on backing vocals, along with Smith’s son Jackson on guitar and her sister Kimberly on mandolin. Gung Ho was not a tremendous commercial seller, peaking at 178 on the Billboard 200. Smith left Arista after Gung Ho and signed with Columbia. Her ﬁrst release for them appeared in 2004, called Trampin’. Critical response to this ninth album was generally favorable. In the wake of the war in Iraq, the tragedy of 9/11, and deep political rift in America, Smith still found herself

Patti Smith

433

with plenty to say, and the record ﬂawlessly meshes spoken word, guitar noise, and acoustic anthems. The My goals on stage are no song “Radio Baghdad,” for example, shows empa- different to Edith Piaf’s or thy; it is written from the point of view of an Iraqi Mick Jagger’s. I want mother. The record was mostly recorded live and is everybody to love me. —on release of Horses noteworthy, too, because her daughter played piano on a folk-gospel song that is the title track. A year later, in 2005, Arista released a thirtieth-anniversary edition of Horses, which is a great collector’s item and a useful introduction to Smith’s work, consisting of the original songs along with some rare and live tracks including a ﬁerce, three-minute, punk rock live take on The Who’s hit “My Generation.” In 2007, Smith released a collection of eclectic covers of other peoples’ songs called Twelve. It is a compelling homage, considering how many other artists have covered her songs and how long Smith herself had been taking the work of others as a starting point for her own inspiration. The collection of songs is far-reaching, with takes on the usual inﬂuences—the Rolling Stones song “Gimme Shelter” and Bob Dylan’s “Changing of the Guards,” along with songs from Stevie Wonder, Nirvana, Grace Slick’s “White Rabbit,” and the Tears for Fears song “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”

MISSION, MOTIVATION, PROCESS In her formative years, Smith was obsessively focused on her image as a poetic ascetic, one whose performances were somehow divined to her through an otherworldly force. Gerri Hirshey wrote about the artist’s narcissism—she would carry around a photograph of the painter Amedeo Modigliani and tell people he was her boyfriend; the artist was known for painting women who looked like Smith. Once when she was being interviewed by Charles Young of Rolling Stone, she initially rebuffed his plebian methods of note-taking—paper and pen—insisting that because she sometimes broke out into “spontaneous poetry” it must be recorded. He produced a tape recorder, and the interview also revealed the shocking fact that Smith once masturbated to her own photograph, judging it a barometer of what a teenage boy might ﬁnd attractive. As much as she was not a stereotypical female musician, she was still aware of the power of her image and her work. “Smith was irritating, compelling and, when she was amped, a fabulous rock performer. Her delivery was alternatively incantatory, pugnacious, sacriﬁcial” (Hirshey 2001, 112–113). All of this, however, must be understood in the context of a little game she and some of her friends would play called “the outrageous lie,” in which they would make up apocryphal stories that were so unbelievable that they simply had to be true. For example, the photographer Lee Childers said that she once told them a story about how she was pregnant at nineteen and that one day

434

Women Icons of Popular Music

the baby kicked so hard that her leg just came out of Smith’s stomach. “Everyone began to think of themselves in mythological proportions,” Childers said (Bockris and Bayley 1999, 62). He said that she used to lie to her advantage in the early days. Smith may have been shrewd or manipulative with —Lenny Kaye the truth, but she was never disingenuous. Growing up, she was formed strongly by the discovery of art and music, but her mother’s religions fanaticism taught her how to pray and to believe that there was some higher, spiritual power. Smith believed that art could provide transcendence and a mystical power. But Smith, like her father, did not like organized religion, and when she was about twelve she ofﬁcially rejected her mother’s faith, Jehovah’s Witness, because it prohibited artistic expression. Not only was this stiﬂing to her as a child, but Smith thought about the afterlife, too. “I certainly did not want to go to heaven if there was no art in heaven,” she said (Bockris and Bayley 1999, 27). Her infatuation with Tibet led to an understanding that a religion could be inclusive, but still, she had trouble. “Religion is always to the exclusion of other people, and that’s why on my records, or in everything I do, I try not to exclude anybody. The imagery of religion is fantastic, but I can’t get into the dogma” (Bockris and Bayley 1999, 28). She even went so far as to say that she believed art and music were replacements for religion for many people who need something to believe in without the inﬂexible structure of religion. But even rejecting organized religion, Smith still needed a hero to worship, and much of her development as an artist follows a classic romantic pattern of artist and apprentice, or artist and mistress. She admitted a hero worshipper and focused some of that hero worshipping at many of the men with whom she collaborated, including Sam Shepard. She said they collaborated so well on Cowboy Mouth because they both work with rhythms. “I do it intellectually. He does it from his heart. We were able to establish a deep communion” (Bockris and Bayley 1999, 69). The story of the play contained autobiographical elements of their relationship as two dreamers who were destined for bigger things but also destined to part. Despite the ill-fated nature of their relationship, Smith saw her time with Shepard as instrumental to her growth. “He inspired me to be stronger and make my move” (Bockris and Bayley 1999, 69). Writing—both songs and poems— always has been important to her, as has been reading, but equally important to Smith have been the people she encountered and whose work she admired and championed. Reﬂecting on her romantic approach to writing, she said she did not know what to do with language as a teenager and young adult. “I had no idea the romance of language was a whole thing in itself. I had no idea of what to do with language. I mean, I used to record my dreams. I had no conception of style of words” (Bockris and Bayley 1999, 40). When she was young, she was of course not fully formed as a writer or poet. Meeting Robert Mapplethorpe was fortuitous; it too, changed her

The whole point of Patti Smith was beyond gender, beyond politics, beyond, beyond. Any time you were defined, you were caught.

Patti Smith

435

approach to self-expression. They explored New York together and made it their playground; the city was Patti Smith saved my life. —Courtney Love an essential part of her thinking and her writing and Mapplethorpe taught her how to direct her own psychic energy into her art. She relished the writing process, even the difﬁcult aspects of it; the agony of getting an idea down on paper, the ﬁght to ﬁnd the right words. Later, in 1996, after more than twenty years of experience with both poetry and music, she described poetry as a struggle, and the process of writing it as “almost like creating a new language. To me, a song should be the opposite. It should be so simple and clean and clear that the music is the code” (Pareles 1996). In addition to battles with language, her ﬁrst record, Horses, represents a battle of ideas and demonstrates Smith’s attention to detail. Although John Cale had the kind of pedigree that Arista thought essential to produce Smith’s work, she and her group frequently clashed with Cale. Passionately committed to her vision, Smith wanted to be able to improvise and work spontaneously in the studio, whereas Cale, with a propensity toward the sonic layers found in the work of Phil Spector or the Beach Boys, thought a more careful, planned approach would suit the group. Eventually, they worked through their conﬂicts to create a record that established her ability to take the work of others—her rewrite of Van Morrison’s “Gloria” and her extrapolation of “Land of 1,000 Dances” most notably illustrate this—and infuse it with her own perspective, to create an entirely new song. Unsurprisingly, her biographers revealed that many of her original song ideas stemmed from her reading and her dreaming. When the record was ﬁnished, there was no question that Mapplethorpe would take the cover photograph, and the image that resulted, with Smith wearing a white shirt, skinny black tie, and a jacket thrown casually over her shoulder, established her as a punk rock poet icon. She called it her “Baudelaire dress suit,” in reference to the poet Charles Baudelaire. The androgyny of the image was striking and unusual in the glam-rock mid-1970s.

LEGACY AND OTHER INTERESTS Smith’s interest in Tibet stems all the way back to her childhood, when she was assigned a project that required her to choose a country and report on it during the school year. She chose Tibet—the teacher implored her to choose another country—but Smith would not back down. It was hard to ﬁnd news because the government was not issuing any information. Smith prayed about it and was frustrated that she could not ﬁnd any information. Ironically, in early 1959, there was an uprising in Tibet that forced the Dalai Lama into exile. After the news broke, she kept praying for his safety and kept admiring the Tibetan Buddhists. She seemed to have found her spiritual soul mate in Buddhism.

436

Women Icons of Popular Music

Later in her life, when she was grieving the loss of her husband, brother, and other important ﬁgures in her life, poet Allen Ginsberg invited her to read at a beneﬁt in Ann Arbor for the Tibetan Buddhist group Jewel Heart. She read a poem called “Florence” and dedicated it to her brother. Years later, in 2001, she performed alongside Emmylou Harris and David Bowie at Carnegie Hall in the Great Miracle Prayer Festival to beneﬁt Tibet House. In addition to her participation in work to beneﬁt Tibet, she has also lent support to AIDS fundraising, especially after the death of Mapplethorpe, and the Green Party, which nominated Ralph Nader in the 2000 presidential campaign, performing songs such as her classic “People Have the Power” at rallies for his campaign and at AIDS awareness–raising events and beneﬁts. Smith was the ﬁrst of the group of performers in downtown New York most closely associated with CBGB to land a record deal, and she still is clearly identiﬁed with that scene. The release of Horses set the stage for the release of records by Television, the Ramones, and Blondie, and it positioned Smith and her group as punk-rock forerunners, trendsetters even, emerging from a heretofore underground scene. In recent years, she has developed a tradition of playing a concert on New Year’s Eve in New York. Her legacy makes her the godmother of punk rock, the poet laureate of punk rock, and the high priestess of punk—all terms that have been used to describe her inﬂuence. Without Smith’s poetically fueled songwriting there would be no do-ityourself folk-punk of Ani DiFranco, the punk rock group the Slits, or the guitar-heavy, feminist, punk-inspired indie rock of the all-female trio SleaterKinney (see sidebar). But Smith did not simply inspire other women to go into music on their own terms—her inﬂuence can also be seen in the kind of abstract imagery that permeates the lyrics of the band R.E.M., whose singer Michael Stipe can be viewed as a latter-day male version of Smith herself. Her compositions live on, too. The collaboration “Because the Night” was most successfully covered by 10,000 Maniacs, and “Dancing Barefoot” has been rendered by at least a half dozen groups or musicians, including U2. Smith’s talent extends beyond music, and in addition to her noted books of poetry her artwork has been exhibited, too, starting from the early years of her career. In early 1977, when she was recuperating from her fall in Florida, she not only completed the book Babel but created a group of drawings for an exhibition designed to coincide with the book’s release. She also received an offer to show her work at the new but esteemed Robert Miller Gallery and asked Mapplethorpe to collaborate with her for it. It was a dream that the two had shared from their early days in New York. In 1978, she and Mapplethorpe launched a show at Miller’s gallery called Films and Stills. Smith relishes the idea that she is a perennial misﬁt, artistically anachronistic. Even later in her career, she held fast to this image. In 2001, she told the New York Times, “My music ﬁts in probably as much as William Blake’s work ﬁt in in his time. I don’t necessarily foresee myself being able to permeate our present culture, but if I keep doing my work, it will be there for people

Patti Smith

Smith’s Legacy: From R.E.M. to Riot Grrrl Patti Smith’s confrontational performance tactics and sexually explicit writing have left a lasting impact on many artists, male and female alike, first in punk rock and later indie rock and riot grrrl. Traces of Smith’s tough attitude and androgynous look can be found in Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, whose band emerged and became popular just as Smith was retreating to Detroit in the early 1980s. The dream-like lyrics and vocal delivery of Michael Stipe of R.E.M., who has collaborated with Smith, owe much to her, too. It is no surprise that an artist who has been so unapologetically prone to hero worship has become one to others. Smith has made a most significant impression on female artists, whether it is the likes of English and American femalefronted or all-female bands such as the Raincoats, the Slits, or Siouxsie and the Banshees, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Siouxsie Sioux, both as part of her group and as a solo artist, has achieved a measure of success in the United States. In the early to mid-1990s, a musical subculture called riot grrrl emerged, and it combined the do-it-yourself ethos of punk rock with the ideas of feminism. To its core it remained a mostly independent affair that emerged from the scene in the Pacific Northwest, with the critically hailed all-female trio SleaterKinney leading much of the impassioned charge. Other artists who loosely affiliated with the scene became commercially successful. The most notable of those was Courtney Love, who at the time was married to Kurt Cobain, lead singer of the grunge band Nirvana. With a complicated confrontational persona Love took the exhibitionism of Madonna and the poetic aesthetics of Smith and turned into her own fierce-but-vulnerable punk-pop with her band Hole.

who seek it and need it. So, I will continue doing my work as long as I think I have something to say” (Richardson 2001). In just a few short months after this interview, however, she and scores of other artists found themselves with plenty to say after the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, blocks from where Smith lived, was destroyed in a terrorist attack. Bristling at the talk of Gung Ho as a “comeback” album, Smith tried to remain above it, insisting that she has not gone anywhere. “If one is an artist, one is an artist within. You take what you are with you. . . . As an artist, I stayed true to myself and true to my work” (Richardson 2001).

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Horses. Arista, 1975 Radio Ethiopia. Arista, 1976 Easter. Arista, 1978

437

438

Women Icons of Popular Music

Gone Again. Arista, 1996 Peace and Noise. Arista, 1997 Gung Ho. Arista, 2000 Trampin’. Columbia, 2004 Horses (Thirtieth Anniversary Edition). Arista, 2005 Twelve. Columbia, 2007

FURTHER READING Bockris, Victor, and Roberta Bayley. Patti Smith: An Unauthorized Biography. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999. Carson, Tom. “Wave.” Rolling Stone 294 (June 28, 1979). Available online at www .rollingstone.com/artists/pattismith/albums/album/105149/review/5946343/wave. Fricke, David. “Gone Again.” Rolling Stone 750–751 (December 2, 1996). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/pattismith/albums/album/235631/review/ 5943303/gone_again. George-Warren, Holly, Patricia Romanowski, and Jon Pareles. The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001. Hirshey, Gerri. We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The True, Tough Story of Women in Rock. New York: Grove Press, 2001. Huey, Steve. “Patti Smith Biography.” All Music Guide. Available online at www .allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:jpﬁxqtgld0e~T1. Marsh, Dave. “Radio Ethiopia.” Rolling Stone 230 (January 13, 1977). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/pattismith/albums/album/227777/review/ 5941548/radio_ethiopia. Marsh, Dave. “Easter.” Rolling Stone 263 (April 20, 1978). Available online at www .rollingstone.com/artists/pattismith/albums/album/120255/review/5944596/easter. McNeil, Legs. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. New York: Grove Press, 2006. Pareles, Jon. “Having Coffee With Patti Smith: Return of the Godmother of Punk.” New York Times (June 19, 1996). Pareles, Jon. “Gung Ho.” Rolling Stone 837 (March 30, 2000). Available online at www .rollingstone.com/artists/pattismith/albums/album/226730/review/5946733/ gung_ho. Ratliff, Ben. “New Releases.” New York Times (October 5, 1997). Richardson, Lynda. “Godmother of Punk Rock Is No Comeback Kid.” New York Times (June 19, 2001). Rolling Stone. “Review of Horses.” Rolling Stone online (January 21, 1997). Available at www.rollingstone.com/artists/pattismith/albums/album/105147/review/ 5942124/ horses. Smith, Patti. “Ain’t it Strange?” Op-Ed. New York Times (March 12, 2007). Smith, Patti. Ofﬁcial artist Web site, see www.pattismith.net. Strauss, Neil. “Poet, Singer, Mother: Patti Smith is Back.” New York Times (December 12, 1995).

AP/Wide World Photos

Tina Turner

440

Women Icons of Popular Music

OVERVIEW

Tina Turner never, ever does things nice and easy. She does them nice and rough, and that’s the way her fans love it—and they love her for it.

The soul singer Tina Turner got her start in the late 1950s as one half of the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. Turner was a trailblazer for many reasons, but mostly for unapologetically blending her own sexuality with —Mark Bego gospel and soul music. As part of the duo, Turner sang and Ike played guitar or piano. The pair garnered accolades, but their records were inconsistent in terms of quality and sales. In the earlier part of their career, they had more success with singles whose titles begged for autobiographical interpretation, starting with 1960’s “A Fool in Love” and 1961’s “I Idolize You.” Both songs were hits on both the R&B and pop charts, proving their crossover potential. Through the rest of the decade, the group had several more Top 10 hits, but their songs generally rode up and down the charts, performing somewhat erratically despite the duo’s potent power in live performances. Ike and Tina Turner continued to release many albums that tried to make a dent in both the R&B and pop charts. Between 1960 and 1975, they had a number of singles surface in the Billboard charts. One of the songs for which they are most remembered, “Proud Mary,” hit number four on the pop singles chart and ﬁve on the black singles chart in 1971, making it their last signiﬁcant smash hit together. It also earned them their only Grammy Award for Best R&B Group Vocal or Instrumental. “Proud Mary” also went gold as a single, and their live album What You Hear is What You Get, recorded at Carnegie Hall in New York City, achieved gold status in 1972. Both the song and the album are useful introductions to the duo’s appeal. The pair performed together until their divorce in the mid-1970s. On her own in the 1980s, Turner reached even bigger fame and gained attention for her seeming inability to age. She enjoyed a series of hits including the autobiographical smash “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” and she continued to perform, often wearing a black leather miniskirt that showed off her legs. Despite her relative absence from performing, touring, and recording since her solo career ﬁrst emerged in the 1980s—Turner’s music does not dominate the airwaves these days—her albums all have sold well, and she continues to serve as an icon and inspiration. Turner wrote a tell-all autobiography in 1986 that exposed her marital relationship as fraught with physical abuse and verbal attacks. She became a strong symbol not only of female survival but African American female survival and inspired countless women—professional singers or not. Her story inspired a ﬁlm about her life that starred the equally formidable actress Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne. Turner’s solo songs, once they were released, burned up the charts and felt like latent anthems that had waited to come out when the time was right. Her music’s messages of empowerment

Tina Turner

were therapeutic self-afﬁrmations for women who also have been dealt an unfair hand in their personal relationships. Tina Turner showed her humanity, and fans responded by buying albums, attending her concerts, and ardently supporting her. Her ﬁrst signiﬁcant solo release Private Dancer has achieved platinum success many times over. It is her best-selling album, fueled by a number of Top 10 hits, especially the ﬁrst single “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” Her 1986 follow-up, Break Every Rule, achieved platinum status as well. The 1989 album Foreign Affair went gold, along with Twenty Four Seven, released in 2000. The soundtrack for the ﬁlm What’s Love Got to Do With It, along with the albums Simply the Best, All The Best, and the live DVD One Last Time in Concert, went platinum as well. The length of Turner’s career does not necessarily correlate with the number of her releases—one would not characterize her as proliﬁc, but her commercial and critical success proves her career’s longevity and her appeal. The recording industry has not overlooked her either; as a solo artist, she has received six Grammy Awards. Turner won a Best Female Rock Vocal Performance Grammy for both “Better be Good to Me” and “What’s Love Got to Do With It”; the latter also earned her a Record of the Year Grammy. Her 1985 song “One of the Living” earned her a Best Female Rock Vocal Performance Grammy, and in 1986 “Back Where You Started” earned her another Grammy in that same category. In 1988, Tina: Live in Europe earned her Best Female Rock Vocal Performance Grammy. The United Kingdom, especially London, has been kind to her. Turner wrote in her autobiography that London felt like her special city, starting with the overseas success there of the song “River Deep, Mountain High” and later as the venue where she would record Private Dancer. Turner has performed and/or recorded with many similar musical luminaries such as Mick Jagger, Bryan Adams, Mark Knopﬂer, Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, Elton John, and David Bowie. A woman of iconic status, Turner has also inspired an entire generation of female singers, especially those whose music originates in the soul, R&B, gospel, or lately, hip-hop genres, such as Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston, Mary J. Blige, Beyoncé Knowles, and Mariah Carey. Arguably, even the image-driven superstar Madonna, who has used her sexuality as a tool, has taken a page from the Tina Turner playbook. Against many odds, personal and professional, Turner created her independence. She is unusual because she did not ﬁnd her own voice and her own fame, on her own terms, until she was in her mid-forties and single again. It is ironic that Turner, who grew up uncomfortable with her body, would ultimately become well known for its seeming agelessness, marked by the ﬂare with which she wore a miniskirt or short dress through the last leg of her ﬁnal tour. Turner has endured much hardship with grace and dignity, and has shown no trace of bitterness, thus becoming an icon of survival and strength. Few female performers can match Turner’s energy, magnetism, and ability to shake and shimmy across a stage.

441

442

Women Icons of Popular Music

EARLY YEARS Turner grew up in a town full of cotton gins and whiskey stills about ﬁfty miles northeast of Memphis, Tennessee, which she immortalized in her song “Nutbush City Limits.” Her father Floyd Richard Bullock was a deacon at the local Baptist church and also worked as an overseer on a farm where their family home was situated. Her mother Zelma was part African American and part Navajo (Native American). Turner was born into a family comprised of an older sister, Alline (age three) and a half-sister named Evelyn, who was Zelma’s daughter from a relationship with a former boyfriend. Her parents’ marriage was fraught with ﬁghting, and Turner, born Anna Mae Bullock, took to spending time wandering the ﬁelds to escape. Turner grew up with lots of other children and family, speciﬁcally her mother’s parents, and in particular Mama Georgie living nearby. Her family was not poor. As a child, Turner described herself alternately as “curious,” “a country girl,” and “a brazen tomboy.” Her sister Alline was her staunchest ally. As a young girl Turner felt awkward and gangly because of her short torso and long legs. Because her parents moved away to work in support of the war effort in the early 1940s, Turner spent part of her early years living with her father’s mother, Mama Roxanna, who was dour and stern. However, Mama Roxanna introduced Turner to the church and to singing. When she and sister Alline went to visit their parents in Knoxville, her mother would take them shopping, and Turner would sing for the store clerks, who would then give her a little bit of money, which she saved. When she was about nine or ten, she also started singing in the church choir once people found out that she had such a strong voice. Turner would also go to Pentecostal services and the Pentecosts’ fervor and passionate display through music made a strong impression on her, even though she was less interested in their dogma and practice. As a child who forged her own independence and was responsible for her own entertainment much of the time—Alline and cousin Margaret helped—Turner often stood on the sidelines observing the adults. Her parents and their friends and family would send the kids to the movies while the adults partied at restaurants and clubs along what was referred to as “the Hole.” Just as Turner was starting to discover her voice, her family life changed quickly. The family had moved a couple of times, to Flagg Grove and Spring Hill, but her life became even more unsettled when she was around ten years old—her mother decided it was time to divorce. Zelma left Richard and the family with no warning and moved to St. Louis, devastating Turner. But she learned a formative lesson. “That’s when it really hit me how much I loved my mother—and how much I hated her, too. I guess I was learning how close love and hate can be” (Turner 1986, 27). A couple of years later, her father left, too, and went to Detroit, leaving his children to the care of family members. Life’s twists and turns forced Turner to grow up quickly. With no economic support from either parent, she started working after school for a local white

Tina Turner

family as something akin to a nanny who also cleaned and did laundry. The Hendersons had a stable, normal loving relationship that left an indelible mark on the teenage Turner. But she could not seem to escape tragedy—when she was fourteen, her half-sister Evelyn and cousin Margaret died in a car accident. Still, Turner managed to rebound, and she and Alline returned to Brownsville to live with Mama Roxanna and attend high school there. At Carver High School, Turner blossomed and was active with track, cheerleading, and basketball, but she soon returned to her maternal grandma’s house for a brief period until Mama Georgie’s death. However, Mama Georgie’s death reunited Turner with her mother, who came from St. Louis for the funeral. Afterward, Turner moved to live with her mother and Alline in St. Louis. She was sixteen. In a youth that is at best described as itinerant and unstable, her move to St. Louis, with its vibrant nightlife and music scene, set her off on the path to become Tina Turner. One evening, her mother let her go with Alline (who was dating the band’s drummer) and her friends to the Club Manhattan. There, she met Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm, staples of the scene. She was entranced, listening to him play guitar, but remarked repeatedly in her autobiography, “[H]e sure is ugly.” Nevertheless, there was something captivating about him that she could not deny. Others found him captivating, too. Raised in Clarksville, Mississippi, Ike was drawn to music from an early age and had grown up listening to white hillbilly music and spinning records as a deejay at a local radio station. He was also drawn to blues music and played piano and joining the group the Tophatters as a teenager. B.B. King helped boost Ike Turner’s career when the legendary bluesman saw his group, a splinter group of Tophatters called the Rhythm Kings, perform. King, whose blues guitar skills have been extremely inﬂuential and mimicked by other artists, introduced them to producer Sam Phillips as Ike was starting to develop a name for himself with his distinctive guitar playing style—he was, for example, an early proponent of using the whammy bar. Turner kept coming back to watch the group perform. Drummer Gene Washington kept an eye on Turner and asked that she sit in the front. He could hear that she was singing along and surreptitiously slipped a microphone near the edge of the stage to pick up her voice. She wanted to go onstage, but she said in her autobiography that no one really paid attention to her because she was so thin, and at the time, it was not a fashionable look. One evening during the intermission, she managed to get the microphone when Ike was playing “You Know I Love You,” by B.B. King. Suddenly, Ike paid attention, and by Turner’s account, picked her up right off the ground and said, “Giirrll! I didn’t know you could really sing!” The pair would sometimes duet or she would take the microphone, and the crowd encouraged her. Of course, her mother was less than thrilled with the development. The Kings of Rhythm were a tough group; its members carried guns and carried on extensively with other women. So her mother banned singing, hoping it would keep her daughter out of their inﬂuence.

443

444

Women Icons of Popular Music

Nevertheless, with no vocal training, Turner ofﬁcially began her professional career when she joined Ike Turner’s touring group at the age of eighteen to sing backup. Ike himself came to her house to ask Turner’s mother for permission. Ike promised to watch over Turner on the road, and he made sure she was dressed beautifully and professionally to perform. When she took the stage, Ike would introduce her as “Little Ann.” Turner was not yet involved romantically with Ike; she was dating the saxophonist Raymond Hill and became pregnant with his child in November of her senior year of high school. Hill was soon out of the picture, and because her mother was not pleased, Turner moved out and lived with her son Raymond Craig, who was born August 20, 1958. Turner sang occasionally with Ike’s group and supplemented her income working part time as a nurse’s aide. The two jobs became too much for her to handle yet were not generating enough money, so Turner was soon singing with the group regularly. Ike invited her to move into his sprawling East St. Louis house, which was home to other musicians, too. She quickly became more than just a backup singer— the pair married in 1962—and by 1960, she, Ike, and his group hit the charts with “A Fool in Love.” It was the start of their long career as the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. Together, they were a potent force; she was a ferocious inferno of energy, wearing sexually provocative outﬁts and singing in a raspy growl at times, and he dressed to the nines and played guitar. Their style was a funky mix of soul and rock that few other acts even dared to match. In some ways, the group was ahead of its time, predating the sort of funk-soul innovation that would become more associated with the 1970s and innovative artists such as Stevie Wonder and Curtis Mayﬁeld. Contemporary artists like Janis Joplin and the Rolling Stones praised the Revue, but before long it would become clear that Little Ann was really the star of the show.

CAREER PATH The Ike and Tina Years Reﬂecting on the early years of her work with Ike, Turner said that he really taught her the ropes because she was unfamiliar with how things worked on the road and what her role ought to be as a singer. She described their relationship initially as being familiar, as if they were brother and sister, but it quickly changed once his relationship with another woman soured and Turner became pregnant with his child. Her pregnancy happened around the time of their ﬁrst hit single, “A Fool in Love,” in 1960. Its success—peaking at number two on the R&B chart—netted them a handful of high-proﬁle tour dates and an appearance on ABC’s American Bandstand, as well as gigs at revered locations such as the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. During this success, Turner had her second son, Ronald Renelle, on October 27, 1960. Because of the

Tina Turner

show’s name—the Ike and Tina Turner Revue—fans thought they were married, but they weren’t—not yet. Ike and Tina Turner had a number of hits from the 1960s through the early 1970s. In the early 1960s, dance music, like the twist and its variations, was popular, which was fortuitous for their style of music and their stage show— full of Turner’s dancing. December 1960 saw the release of “I Idolize You,” which peaked at number ﬁve on the R&B chart and eighty-two on the pop chart in Billboard. Many of these early 1960s singles bear the residue of the girl group sound, but Turner’s sexually charged energy and raw vocal edge turned them into something exciting and new. Sue Records released the group’s debut album in 1960 on the heels of the success of these singles; The Soul of Ike and Tina Turner includes “It’s Gonna Work out Fine” and “Poor Fool,” along with “You Shoulda Treated Me Right.” Later that year, in September, “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine” became their highest charting single of the era, peaking at number fourteen on the pop chart and number two on the R&B chart. Another big hit followed in 1962, when “Poor Fool” went to number four on the R&B chart and peaked at thirty-eight on the pop chart. The song was called a blatant rewrite of “A Fool in Love,” but the best of their early work was “vibrant and startlingly earthy, a powerful commercial transﬁguration of the roadhouse blues of Ike’s Delta youth” (Turner 1986, 89). More songs were released, such as “Tra La La La La” and “Prancing” (Ike’s old theme song), but none of them connected with audiences. The pressure made Ike increasingly difﬁcult to live and work with, and when Ike was unhappy, those around him suffered. Ike, however, was not interested in managers, contracts, or anyone interfering with his music, so since the money was ﬂowing, he decided it was time to move to California and set his sights on bigger things. Looking back on this period, when their success really starting to take off, Turner said they spent most of their time practicing and playing. In between dates they would sing and work out material in the car as they drove hundreds of miles from gig to gig. “I know some people say those old records are classics now, but I hated them. And onstage, the music was so loud, so noisy, and the keys were all too high. Ike always had me screaming and screeching,” she said (Turner 1986, 85). However, it was the very screaming and screeching that helped distinguish the group both from pop music and also black music, which was starting to gain a white audience in the early to mid-1960s, and helped Ike and Tina Turner’s sound appeal to a wider, mass audience. Turner’s image was strong and singular right from the start. An over-bleaching accident made her hair fall out, which led her to start wearing wigs; eventually, the backup singers, the Ikettes, wore them too, and it became the signature look. Onstage, she shook, screamed, sang, and looked every part of the sexually liberated woman, but offstage, it was another story. Her onstage persona and her real life would, over the course of her marriage to the womanizing and physically abusive Ike Turner, diverge in a dangerous way,

445

446

Women Icons of Popular Music

making it ultimately impossible for Turner to stay with him. Turner did not have an easy time. She had two small children, little support, and a nearly constant cycle of touring, recording, and performing, which was interrupted by periods of Ike’s mean streaks. Although she felt indebted to him because of her career, she was also afraid of him. Ike had given her the name “Tina Turner” before he even married her, and Turner had became famous through that name, one that Ike bestowed on her when “A Fool in Love” was released. Their marriage was complicated, and Ike did not seem to take it seriously; he even married Tina in Mexico to avoid paying his then-wife Anna Mae Wilson any royalties or part of his growing bank account. Turner did not achieve her most signiﬁcant ﬁnancial success until she was a solo artist, despite her long afﬁliation with Ike. On the surface, Ike and Tina Turner’s music seemed to embody African American progress and equality—their role as a team was unique in a decade that saw girl groups, Aretha Franklin, The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Ray Charles. In concert, their performances were electrifying so they were a popular live draw, but their energy did not always translate well onto records in the studio. The duo never had the comfort of the same record label for long; Ike and Tina went back and forth between labels large and small. Consequently, when looking at their chart history, their trajectory is somewhat inconsistent and itinerant. In the early 1960s, they recorded three similar albums with overlapping material on Sue Records. But Ike would take recording offers as he got them from various labels. For example, Get It was released by Cenco Records in 1964, but Her Man, His Woman came out on Capitol, followed by a period of live albums. The group was simultaneously signed to Sue Records again in 1964 as well as to a singles deal through Kent Records. The Kent deal yielded just one song, “I Can’t Believe What You Say,” which just got into the Top 100, peaking at number ninety-ﬁve. In 1965, Sue released Ike & Tina Turner’s Greatest Hits, but it did not reach the charts—perhaps audiences were confused by all of their material. Indeed, some critics have argued that Ike and Tina suffered from a lack of consistently good material from which to choose. They did have some hits, especially “Proud Mary,” but even the now-classic anthems such as “River Deep, Mountain High” by Phil Spector charted better overseas than in the United States on its release. Turner’s involvement with Phil Spector was important because it gave her a small taste of independence and reinforced her appeal as an artist exclusive of Ike’s control. Known for, among other things, his work as the producer behind the Ronettes’s hit records, Spector met Tina Turner when she and Ike performed on a special called The TNT Award Show in December 1965. Spector wanted to produce her, but of course Ike insisted on his own involvement. Spector paid Ike $20,000 for Tina’s services and put together an album that included new, more pop-oriented renditions of some previously released tracks, including hits “I Idolize You,” “A Fool in Love,” and a new song Ike wrote called “Make ’Em Wait.”

Tina Turner

447

The album, however, is most noteworthy because of Spector’s selections for Turner, a combination of He just wanted me to sing the soulful ballads and takes on R&B classics such as song. It was my voice he liked, “Save the Last Dance for Me” and “A Love Like not the screaming. —On working with Phil Spector Yours.” The selections are pieces of pop music history, on “River Deep, Mountain High” making the album worth seeking out. However, critics are at odds as to whether Spector’s production values work with Turner’s voice. Spector reportedly spent more than $20,000 on recording “River Deep, Mountain High” with more than twenty-ﬁve backing vocalists and seventy-ﬁve musicians. The song allowed Tina to open up vocally. Interestingly, Ike was not involved in recording the song. The sessions were long, arduous, and exhausting, but by accounts of those who were involved in the project, it was unusual, fantastic, exciting. It was not clear how commercial the song would be: The pop elements made it an unusual choice for R&B radio and Turner’s bluesy wailing was not an immediate choice for pop radio. In England, “River Deep, Mountain High” was a number three hit, but in the United States it only made to number eighty-eight on the Billboard chart. Later, in 1970, the Supremes and the Four Tops recorded it to become a number fourteen hit. Spector went into seclusion for three years after the song failed to produce a hit in the United States. The album of the same name was not even released in the United States until 1969 by A&M Records, but the song’s success in the United Kingdom garnered Ike and Tina a sizable following and a slot on the Rolling Stones tour in fall 1966. The tour exposed them to a different kind of touring atmosphere (professionalism, larger audiences), as well as the company of high caliber artists. For Turner, it also created lifelong friends out of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Jagger even reportedly asked for dance lessons backstage, so taken was he with their live energy and visual appeal. Turner is credited with teaching Mick Jagger to dance. By most accounts, by the mid-1960s, Turner was grateful for any diversion that would take Ike’s attention from her, whether it was a new Ikette (they seemed to be a revolving door for his libido), a new housekeeper for their Los Angeles home, or a new business manager; it eased Turner’s burden a bit. She seemed to be biding her time, but she also did not seem to be having much fun. On meeting her for the ﬁrst time, record label honcho Bob Krasnow, who later would become afﬁliated with Elektra, said that she was on her hands and knees wiping the kitchen ﬂoor, wearing a do-rag, looking like Ike’s maid. During her tour of Europe with the Rolling Stones, she went to a fortune teller who told her that she would be a tremendous star, and her partner would fall away in importance. The reading, along with their international success, which was helping them gain a mass audience, must have been a solace for Turner. She claimed that at this point she realized she was not in love with Ike anymore, but she continued to stay, hoping that a smash hit record would enable her to leave him.

448

Women Icons of Popular Music

Ike and Tina Turner and their revue would go out while they were on top and while Turner herself was growing as an artist. The years 1967 to 1970 may have been inconsistent at times, but they were creative. Live, their performances maintained their frenetic energy. In 1968, they released three different albums, all for different labels, including another live release, Ike & Tina Turner and the Ikettes in Person on the Minit label. London Records offered a retrospective called Ike & Tina Turner. David McGee, writing in the New Rolling Stone Album Guide, said, “[T]heir failure to achieve any consistency in the studio mirrored the decline in the quality of their live performances and Ike’s descent into drugged-out oblivion” (McGee 2004). Ike had started doing drugs, speciﬁcally cocaine, around this time, and one afternoon Turner fought back against the revolving door of women in their home, catching Ike in the act of cheating. Ike’s irrational and violent behavior also created a constant change in musicians and Ikettes, which must have contributed somewhat to the group’s inconsistency. During their 1968 tour of England, Turner discovered she was pregnant with another Ike Turner baby and decided to have an abortion. Shortly thereafter, she attempted to kill herself by taking an overdose of Valium, a move that further enraged Ike, who did not permit her time to recuperate once she was released from the hospital. Still, the group pressed on. In 1969, they released a few more records on different labels yet again. They were reunited with Bob Krasnow, at Blue Thumb Records now, who had them record the Otis Redding tune “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” in spite of Ike’s initial disagreement. However, the song hit sixty-eight on the Billboard charts, boosting the album it came from, Outta Season, to the ninety-one spot. The Hunter followed, which yielded one hit, “Bold Soul Sister,” that went to ﬁfty-nine. These chart positions were not as high as their hits earlier in the decade. In 1969, they performed in Las Vegas, at the Newport ’69 festival in Northridge, California, and on the leg of the U.S. tour with the Rolling Stones. Turner turned thirty that year and started to yearn for a more active role in selecting music. Turner realized she wanted to sing rock and roll and was tiring of the R&B songs about being downtrodden and lonely. She eventually persuaded Ike to let her record “Come Together” by The Beatles; it was a smart move, for it peaked at ﬁftyseven on the Billboard singles chart. “Come Together” was also the title for the album, which became their foray into rock and their ﬁrst release for Minit (which became Liberty and was later absorbed by United Artists), with takes on “Honky Tonk Woman” along with Sly and the Family Stone’s “I Want to Take You Higher.” Turner was hospitalized with tuberculosis in 1970: She had to drive herself to the hospital in their limousine to ensure she’d get there. The Rolling Stones

I couldn’t really relate to that “movement” kind of thing. They were talking about “liberation”—but liberation from, like, housework. That was the least of my problems. My problem was simply survival.

Tina Turner

449

ﬂooded her room with ﬂowers. When she was discharged, she discovered that Ike had completely remod- The first time you see Tina is eled their home in what was described as “Superﬂy mind-boggling. She’s so gutsy ghetto whorehouse chic style. Tina was horriﬁed at and dynamic! —Keith Richards of the the sight” (Bego 2003). Later that year, after another Rolling Stones stint in Vegas where Turner met and befriended fellow performer Ann-Margret, Ike and Tina returned to the studio. Their recording career, though, became revived with their Top 10 hit “Proud Mary,” a classic rock tune by Creedence Clearwater Revival, for Liberty Records in 1971. (Their version was captured on ﬁlm in the documentary ﬁlm Gimme Shelter.) It became their ﬁrst Top 10 single on the pop charts and their ﬁrst number-one selling single, peaking at number four. It was followed by Live at Carnegie Hall: What You See is What You Get, which went gold in the United States and should have made Turner some money. Ike, however, was still controlling every aspect of their lives. A small reprieve came in the form of a Grammy Award in 1972 for a Best Rhythm & Blues Performance for Duo or Group, thanks to the success of “Proud Mary.” Breaking Free Through Buddhism and Finding Platinum Success Ike and Tina Turner slipped out of the charts until 1973 with the album Nutbush City Limits. Turner wrote ﬁve of its ten songs, including the title track. The largely autobiographical track, which talks about her roots, made it to number twenty-two in the United States and number four in the United Kingdom. The autobiographical “Club Manhattan” describes when she ﬁrst met the Kings of Rhythm. Overall, the album did not win them much in the way of commercial acclaim, but she made her mark. “Nutbush City Limits” has become a staple of her repertoire. Around this time, Turner started talking back to Ike and ﬁghting back. She sought the advice of tarot card readers and fortune tellers, who continued to reinforce the idea that bigger things were ahead for her. Their words helped through this challenging period as she planned her exit. She had begun taking charge of plans by directing the Ikettes, writing the arrangements of some of the tunes, and communicating ideas about the performance. Turner’s appearance in the ﬁlm version of The Who’s Tommy as the Acid Queen, with a short but memorable role as a substance abuse expert, went over well, and Turner enjoyed the process. The ﬁlm was well received by critics, and Ike and Tina’s group did a cover version of the Pete Townshend track “Acid Queen.” The soundtrack reached number two on the Billboard charts. Ultimately, Buddhism enabled Turner to develop the strength and conﬁdence to leave Ike. He had hired a woman in 1974 named Valerie Bishop, and when Turner learned that Bishop chanted, she became curious. Bishop told her about Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism. Chanting changed Turner irrevocably;

450

Women Icons of Popular Music

she started to understand the concept and power of karma and began to see how her life was offering her opportunities to learn lessons. She left him in 1975 and started making television appearances to earn money for herself, thanks to the help of a former Ike employee, Rhonda Graam. She used an alias to make the bookings; Ike had threatened anyone who tried to help Turner’s career. Although Turner recorded a few albums in the 1970s, her career seemed confused and undirected, probably because some were released while she was living with Ike, such as Tina Turns Country On in 1974 (United Artists Records). With covers of James Taylor, Dolly Parton, and Bob Dylan, it did not fare too well. The album’s biggest hit, “Sexy Ida,” for instance, stalled out at sixty-ﬁve in December 1974. Their ﬁnal charting single “Baby Get It On” came out in June 1975 and went to eighty-eight. The divorce process dragged on for nearly two years. In 1977, with the assistance of Mike Stewart from United Artists, Turner mounted a series of solo shows with a new band, which was a glitzy production with Turner wearing Bob Mackie gowns and performing to standing ovations. After many lawyers, threats, and much fear, the divorce was ﬁnalized in March 1978. Two other Turner records, Rough (Liberty) in 1978 and Love Explosion (1979), comprised mostly of covers of contemporary songs, came and went with little fanfare. Australian manager Roger Davies, whom she met through singer Olivia Newton-John, helped her overcome seemingly insurmountable debt. Turner owed money for cancelled gigs for the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, to Mike Stewart for backing her cabaret-styled show, and to the IRS. She started playing in Canada, South Africa, Australia, and Southeast Asia while Davies made mental notes on what could be changed. He pushed her toward rock and roll and to tour Europe; he got her gigs in New York, where she had not played in ten years, at the hot club the Ritz. She joined Rod Stewart onstage for a Saturday Night Live performance and played a few dates with the Rolling Stones again. With this new direction, she was on her way. Soon, audiences would encounter Tina Turner on her own, and her solo releases would be marked by her unique mix of soul and strength. In 1983, she recorded a song with a group called B.E.F., remaking the Temptations’s “Ball of Confusion.” Her participation did not go unnoticed: Capitol signed her, and she started recording a solo record, which was nearly scuttled at the last minute because of management changes. The ﬁrst single she released, a cover of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together,” became a Top 40 hit in England in 1983. The song was chosen accidentally, however, during the debate over what song to record with B.E.F. in London. Turner did her vocals in one take. The album Private Dancer was recorded in England. Davies wanted strong songs that Turner could sing—rather than scream—and other than “Better Be Good to Me,” he was dry. He brought in fellow Aussie Terry Britten, who was living in London and who brought in a song he co-wrote with partner Graham

Tina Turner

Lyle, “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” The song, an instant smash, spent three weeks at number one and became akin to a Tina Turner anthem. The mid-tempo rumination on a failed relationship with small touches such as a harmonica wail and uncluttered production let Turner’s voice take center stage. Private Dancer spawned more Top 10 singles, including the title track and “Better Be Good to Me,” the latter of which was produced by U.K. musician and producer Rupert Hine. In the song, she spits out the lyrics “I don’t have no use/for what you loosely call the truth” and stands her ground, demanding self respect. The album peaked at number three on the Billboard charts and went to number forty-ﬁve in the United Kingdom. To date, Private Dancer has sold more than 11 million copies worldwide, and it stayed in the number three position behind two other tremendously successful albums: Prince’s Purple Rain and Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. Rolling Stone gave the album four stars and stated that “Tina Turner makes a powerful comeback on Private Dancer. Turner throws herself into the material here, her voice rasping but strong, physical and impossibly sensual.” Throughout, Turner’s singing strikes a balance between tough and vulnerable so that several of the songs give the impression of being song by a survivor, a ﬁghter; Private Dancer also became a personal statement, too. By the end of her summer tour opening for Lionel Richie, the album had reached the number two slot. “What’s Love” went to number one shortly thereafter. It may have taken her over twenty years, but in a few short months, Turner became a household word, seemingly an overnight sensation. She won Grammys for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance (“What’s Love”) and Best Female Rock Vocal Performance (“Better Be Good to Me”), and, along with producer Terry Britten, Record of the Year for “What’s Love Got to Do With It.” Around this same time, she received a call from the Australian director George Miller, who wanted Turner to appear in the next installment of his Mad Max ﬁlms. Turner had been yearning for a role in a ﬁlm again and was thrilled to take the part of the warrior woman, Entity, in Miller’s futuristic action ﬂick Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, starring Mel Gibson. Her performance in the ﬁlm was well received. She sang the ﬁlm’s theme song “We Don’t Need Another Hero,” which became a number two hit, and she recorded another single for the ﬁlm “One of the Living.” The ﬁlm was popular with audiences, and it led to an offer to take a role in Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple, which Turner turned down because it was too close to her life. Such success garnered Turner a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame on August 28, 1986. Several months later while still on a roll, “Typical Male,” the ﬁrst single from her follow-up album Break Every Rule, became a hit in the United Kingdom. By fall 1986 it had reached number two on the singles chart in the United States. Additionally, the video for her duet with Canadian singer Bryan Adams “It’s Only Love” won an MTV video award. Break Every Rule was eagerly anticipated, and the material charted similar territory and was a safe follow-up to Private Dancer. It features production from a number

451

452

Women Icons of Popular Music

of respected players, including Terry Britten and Rupert Hine again, mastering and producing genius Bob Clearmountain, Bryan Adams, Mark Knopﬂer, and Neil Dorfsman. Rolling Stone gave it extensive coverage, and in the review, Davitt Sigerson said that Turner had consistently been an instrument of someone else’s genius or marketing ideas. But Sigerson then went on to laud her voice, saying the sound was better than ever in such songs as “What You Get is What You See” and in showing a sense of humor in “Overnight Sensation.” Although much of her success indeed has come at the behest of men in power in the music business, Sigerson’s criticism undermined Turner’s natural talent as a vocalist and her ability to infuse her own musical patois, of equal parts hurt and healing, into her delivery. Some artists seem to move beyond critical reproach once their records start to take off, and Turner is no exception. The album went to number four in the United States and number two in the United Kingdom, and by November it had received platinum certiﬁcation. At this point, Turner had proven she had made it on her own, yet despite her burgeoning solo career, some fans still did not quite understand why she had left Ike. To answer that question and tell her side of the story, she wrote the autobiography I, Tina with rock journalist Kurt Loder, well known for his work with Rolling Stone and MTV. Turner was unsparing in her honesty, unafraid to tell readers how violent Ike was and how her life was endangered, especially toward the end of their relationship. Around the time of the publication of I, Tina in October 1986, Turner also sat for an extensive, candid session with Nancy Collins for a Rolling Stone interview. She revealed no bitterness, despite her troubles with Ike and the fact that she was shown little love from either parent growing up. Instead, Turner came across as a loner and a tenacious, talented warrior who exuded grace and understanding. Turner’s story, rich with drama and personal sacriﬁce and triumph, caught the eye of Hollywood. The book became a ﬁlm in 1993 (see sidebar). What’s Love Got to Do With It? starred Angela Basset and Laurence Fishburne in the roles of Tina and Ike. Both actors were nominated for a Best Actress and Best Actor Academy Award. Basset was nominated for and won the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture. The song “I Don’t Wanna Fight” won a Grammy Award for Best Song Written Speciﬁcally for a Motion Picture or for Television. Before the ﬁlm was produced, Turner started to spend more time in Europe and had begun to develop a relationship with a younger German man, Erwin Bach, the managing director of her European label EMI. A live album, Tina: Live in Europe, came out in 1988 and is noteworthy because it features duets with other prominent musicians including David Bowie, Bryan Adams, Eric Clapton, and Robert Cray. Fittingly, her next studio album would receive the title Foreign Affair in 1989. Released in September, just a couple months shy of her ﬁftieth birthday, the album was recorded in Los Angeles and Paris and was produced by a number of players, again including Dan Hartman, Rupert Hine,

Tina Turner

Art Reflects Real Life on the Silver Screen The Tina Turner autobiography I, Tina has all the necessary ingredients to create a heartbreaking and triumphant dramatic film. In What’s Love Got to Do With It?, the 1993 adaptation of her book, director Brian Gibson and screenwriter Kate Lanier focus mostly on the musical and personal relationship between Tina (Angela Bassett) and the brutish, ambitious Ike (Laurence Fishburne). The performance by Bassett, with her high cheekbones, defined biceps, and winning smile, earned her an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe Award. Bassett read Turner’s book several times and studied her performances; Turner also offered her tips on wigs, makeup, dance steps, and her onstage style. Bassett exercised and became a lean, mean version of Turner, pushing herself so hard that she fractured her hand during filming and had to soak her feet in ice after two seventeen-hour days shooting the “Proud Mary” musical number. Memorable highlights of What’s Love include Turner in the studio with Phil Spector recording “River Deep” and the kind hotel manager who gave her a room for free when she slipped out of Ike’s grasp for good with only thirty-six cents to her name. Although Bassett lip-syncs to the songs, some of which Turner herself rerecorded for the occasion, she convincingly channels Turner by adopting the same halted speech and subtle shoulder shrug and moves with slithering strut across a stage. What’s Love Got to Do With It? ends with concert footage of Turner herself, bringing the story full circle. The role shaped Bassett’s career, with turns as equally formidable women dealing with seemingly insurmountable relationship obstacles in the Terry McMillan film adaptations of Waiting to Exhale (1995) and How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998).

Roger Davies, Graham Lyle, Tony Joe White, as well as Turner herself. Her momentum was still consistent: The album went to number one in the United Kingdom and thirty-one in the United States. It yielded the upbeat anthem “The Best,” which went to ﬁfteen on the Billboard charts in the United States and number ﬁve in the United Kingdom. Foreign Affair also contained “Steamy Windows,” a song whose lyrics suggest her own times spent in the backseat of boyfriend (and heartbreaker) Harry Taylor’s car as a teenager. People magazine said the song exempliﬁed what was right and what was wrong about the record. Writer Ralph Novak said she “sounds as passionate and expressive as ever” but faults the material as “wrongheaded,” citing it as odd that a forty-nine-year-old woman would sing a song about making out in the backseat of a car. Another anthem, “The Best,” could easily be a manifesto or fawning praise for a lover. In the chorus, she declares, “You’re simply the best/Better than all the rest.” Most critics have some affection for Turner but still felt mixed on the album’s content.

453

454

Women Icons of Popular Music

Audiences responded well—the record charted to thirty-nine in the United States and thirteen in the United Kingdom. Turner continued to tour the world, —David Bowie selling out arena after arena. The record only went gold—small sales in comparison to her previous two solo works—but “The Best” was an unqualiﬁed hit, reaching number ﬁfteen on the Billboard Hot 100. In 1991 a greatest hits collection, Simply the Best, was released with some of her most beloved tunes along with a few new ones. The soundtrack for What’s Love Got to Do With It? gave her another boost in 1993 by going platinum. To some extent, Turner kept a low proﬁle in the 1990s, but in 2000, she released Twenty Four Seven. Anthony DeCurtis in Rolling Stone described it: “She sweeps through the eleven generic tracks on this album with the force of a tornado whipping through a trailer park” (DeCurtis 2000), a testament to the fact that her voice is still strong and undiminished even at age sixty. Like Novak, DeCurtis clearly is fond of her but believes for the sake of Turner’s art that she deserves better, more compelling material to sing.

She is a phoenix that has risen from the ashes.

MISSION, MOTIVATION, PROCESS So much of Turner’s early process of making music was unorthodox; she is not a songwriter per se, and her early years with Ike Turner show how utterly helpless and dependent she was on him and how his use of fear and violence kept her with him. In short, the process of becoming famous was an exercise in control; he controlled her, her career, and the money. The ﬁrst hit Ike and Tina had together, “A Fool in Love,” was at best an accidental smash; accidental because Turner did not want to sing it at ﬁrst and also because Ike, despite his talent, could not discern a hit. At the time it was recorded, Ike Turner wanted an all-girl backup group and wanted to just send out the recording to whatever label would put it on the air. But the lead singer Ike had contracted did not pan out, so he got “Little Ann” to sing it instead. In her autobiography, Turner wrote that “I didn’t really want to sing it—I didn’t care for all that hey-hey-hey stuff” (1986, 66). The only label that responded was Henry “Juggy” Murray’s Sue Records. Murray came to St. Louis to meet with Ike Turner and after hearing the demo gave him a $25,000 advance and insisted that Turner sing. In fact, he suggested that Ike make Turner more of the star. Although Ike was not poor—he had his house, his Cadillacs, and his women and was sharply dressed—he was frustrated with his level of success. So he agreed and decided to not only highlight her but to rechristen the act as the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, inspired by the wild women of jungle movies such as Sheena and Nyoka. With backup singers asking “why he treats you like he do” and Tina on lead singing “Got my nose open and that’s no lie/And I’m gonna keep him

Tina Turner

satisﬁed,” the song’s lyrics certainly suggest an autobiographical element: The man was a cad and rough around the edges, but the woman was strong. According to Kurt Loder, “the ironic tension in the song derives from the fact that, while the woman depicted by the lyrics was hopelessly in thrall to her no-good man, the actual woman singing those lyrics seemed incredibly strong” (Turner 1986, 77). At the time Turner was pregnant with Ike’s child, so the situation was complicated, but she felt as if she owed him—her whole life was dependent on him since her own family had more or less deserted her, and she had few opportunities otherwise. The song took off, slowly but surely, and by August had climbed to number two on the Billboard R&B charts. It was described as the blackest record to creep into the white pop charts since Ray Charles’s gospelstyled “What’d I Say!” Further complicating matters was the fact that Turner developed jaundice while pregnant and was hospitalized, so she heard the song from her hospital bed and could not easily celebrate. She experienced her fame from her hospital bed, much like Patsy Cline. Reﬂecting on her nascent vocal style, Turner said she was basically imitating the popular soul singers of the day, such as Sam Cooke and Ray Charles. There were not really any female models to mimic. She thought her voice was heavy because her mother and sister’s voices were low, and that the raspiness was natural to her voice. She went on to say that she did not like pretty songs, nor did she sing much in a straightforward manner—she thought the rougher sound of rock and roll suited her voice better. Her voice and Ike’s music—he was admittedly never much of a singer—seemed an apt match. Adding to the psychologically torturous nature of the process of working together, the songs that Ike wrote for Tina to sing often seem like a projection of how he wanted her to act: hopelessly devoted despite any difﬁculties such devotion might entail. In “I Idolize You,” she’s worshipful, whereas in “Letter from Tina,” it tells us how she happily surrenders to his control and perhaps the ultimate dream. “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine” promises wedded bliss by keeping the relationship together. In retrospect, the song feels creepy and sinister. Turner was able to write some of her own material toward the end of her career with Ike. One of her most noteworthy efforts is her song “Nutbush City Limits,” which remained part of her repertoire in her solo career. In a special issue of Rolling Stone magazine, singer Janet Jackson wrote about Turner’s music, saying that at the outset, it was based on “hard times, hard truths, and harsh realities,” and she mentioned “Nutbush City Limits” in particular (Jackson 2005). The accidental nature of song selection continued to deﬁne her solo career. Reportedly, she resisted recording the song “What’s Love Got to Do With It?,” which could not have been more autobiographical if she had written it herself. The chorus asks, “What’s love got to do, got to do with it?/Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?” The song itself was a mid-tempo soulful lament, a stark contrast to the classic, high-energy wailing of her work with Ike.

455

456

Women Icons of Popular Music

But when initially presented with this song and “Show Some Respect,” she said she couldn’t sing such wimpy songs. She did not know that “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” had been written for her. “I didn’t think it was my style. By that time, I felt that I had become all the songs that I was covering, that I had become rock and roll. I had just never thought of singing pop” (Turner 1986, 216). Still, Davies was insistent about the selections. When she arrived and met producer Terry Britten, a man who idolized Turner and loved “Nutbush City Limits,” Turner told him ﬂat out that she didn’t like his songs. As he started playing around with them, she grew excited and asked if he could situate them in a higher key. Two weeks ensued of scrambling around London ﬁnding enough material for an entire album, along with session musicians, until the record was ﬁnished. “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” was released as the ﬁrst single, but only eleven radio stations added it to their play lists. Davies lobbied for Capitol to promote it more, and in another week, more than 100 stations were spinning the song. When the album came out in mid-June, the Top 50 success of “What’s Love” buoyed it to 101 on the Billboard chart, where it kept climbing.

LEGACY AND OTHER INTERESTS Since the wildly successful period of her career in the 1980s, Turner has slowed down the recording pace somewhat. After her contract with Capitol expired in July 1992, she signed with Virgin Records, which made sense considering her good relationship with the United Kingdom and the fact that she was living in Europe primarily by that time. She took a few years off from recording and touring. During this time, the soundtrack for What’s Love Got to Do With It? was selling briskly, and the theme song she had recorded with U2 for the latest James Bond ﬁlm Goldeneye was doing well. When she was ready to work again, Turner sought out Trevor Horn and Terry Britten, among some others, to produce and invited artists such as Sheryl Crow and the Pet Shop Boys to contribute to her next release, 1996’s Wildest Dreams. It was released ﬁrst overseas but not in the United States until after the rest of the world had embraced it. Rolling Stone’s Elysa Gardner said, “Turner’s raspy, robust alto and her ability to carry herself with both dignity and chutzpah are as formidable as they were when she recorded the incendiary ‘River Deep, Mountain High’ three decades ago” (Gardner 1998). In 1999, Turner appeared as the opening diva for VH-1’s Divas Live, an evening that also included performances by Cher, Chaka Khan, Whitney Houston, Faith Hill, and Mary J. Blige, along with Elton John. Through that year, she was working on the material for 2000’s Twenty Four Seven, with songwriting and production assistance from Terry Britten, Johnny Douglas, and a trio called Absolute. The ﬁrst single was a dance track, “When the Heartache Is Over,” which was handled by the producers of Cher’s hit “Believe” and which reached the Billboard Top 40. The album also featured

Tina Turner

a previously unrecorded ballad, “I Will Be There,” written by the Bee Gees. Two of the album’s songs received some serious backing from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The album’s content is best described as upbeat and adult contemporary. Twenty Four Seven prompted a farewell tour during which she continued to wow audiences with her youthful energy and the nonstop nature of a show that boasted choreography, set changes, and sexy costumes. It was a sellout success, ranking as the highest-grossing concert of 2000. Most recently, in October 2004, she recorded a new song “Open Arms,” written by the U.K. team of Ben Barsen, Martin Brammer, and Colette Van Sertima. The song was part of her November release All the Best: The Live Collection, which came out on DVD in 2005 and included duets with Bryan Adams and David Bowie and thirty-three tracks of Turner’s live performances from venues around the world, including her last show at Wembley Stadium in 2000. The album also introduces two other new songs, “Something Special” and “Complicated Disaster.” Turner appeared on a number of television shows to support its release, including The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show, and The View. To date, the record has sold a million copies, and the video has been certiﬁed gold. Turner, like many icons, is no stranger to philanthropy. In January 1993 she donated $50,000 to help open the Exchange Club/Tina Turner Child Abuse Center in Ripley, Tennessee. In May 2006 she released a duet with the singer Elisa titled “Teach Me Again” to beneﬁt the All The Invisible Children cause, which supports projects that improve the lives of children worldwide. As a child, Turner suspected that she had been unwanted by her mother. Years later, after Turner had seen a psychic, she confronted her mother, who admitted that Turner was the result of an unplanned pregnancy. Additionally, Zelma had not given Turner any credit for her career. Toward the end of her mother’s life, Turner confronted her and ﬁnally made Zelma understand that Turner had created her own success. Biographer Mark Bego asserted that “what she lacked in receiving maternal love, she has made up for both in her personal and professional life. Today, in the 21st century, she is one of the most beloved women in show business” (Bego 2003, 12). Janet Jackson added that “over the years her story changed, and her music reﬂected those changes beautifully. Tina has the ability to dream, get out, get over, and get on with it” (Jackson 2005). Currently, she does just that, living with boyfriend Erwin Bach in her home in the south of France. She also has the ability to share her story with the rest of the world; a musical about her life story called Simply the Best is reportedly in the works. At the end of her autobiography, Turner wrote that she is not even close to being ready to quit. She assured readers, “I’m not ripe enough to teach anybody. When I’m ready, I will devote all my time to that—I’ll tell you what I’ve learned.” According to singer Janet Jackson, who experienced a tremendous success in the 1980s and into the 1990s, Turner is already a teacher. She said, “Tina Turner has become more than just a musical superstar or a sex symbol, though she is deﬁnitely both of those things. For me—and I imagine for millions

457

458

Women Icons of Popular Music

of others—Tina now stands as an enduring symbol of survival and of grace. Her music is a healing thing” (Jackson 2005). SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY With Ike Turner: The Soul of Ike & Tina Turner. Sue, 1961 Live at Carnegie Hall: What You Hear is What You Get. United, 1971 Nutbush City Limits. United, 1973

Solo Career: Private Dancer. Capitol Records, 1984 Break Every Rule. Capitol, 1986 Foreign Affair. Capitol, 1989 Simply the Best. Capitol, 1991 What’s Love Got to Do With It? Virgin, 1993

FURTHER READING Bego, Mark. Tina Turner: Break Every Rule. Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2003. Collins, Nancy. “Tina Turner: The Rolling Stone Interview.” Rolling Stone 485 (October 23, 1986). DeCurtis, Anthony. “Twenty-Four Seven. Review.” Rolling Stone 834 (February 17, 2000). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/tinaturner/albums/album/ 260671/review/5946772/twenty_four_seven. Gardner, Elysa. “Wildest Dreams. Review.” Rolling Stone 747 (February 2, 1998). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/tinaturner/albums/album/ 124281/review/5941084/wildest_dreams. Jackson, Janet. “Nutbush City Limits.” Rolling Stone 972 (April 22, 2005). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/tinaturner/articles/story/7248197/61_tina_ turner. McGee, David. “Ike and Tina Turner Biography.” The New Rolling Stone Album Guide. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004. Available online at www.rollingstone .com/artists/ikeandtinaturner/biography. Novak, Ralph. “Foreign Affair. Review.” People Weekly (October 9, 1989). Rolling Stone. “Private Dancer. Review.” Rolling Stone online (January 22, 1997). Available at www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/243615/private_dancer. Sigerson, Davitt. “Break Every Rule. Review.” Rolling Stone 486 (November 6, 1986). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/tinaturner/albums/album/305966/ review/5946482/break_every_rule. Turner, Tina. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. See www.ofﬁcialtina.com. Turner, Tina, with Kurt Loder. I, Tina. New York: William Morrow, 1986. West, Hollie I. “Tina at Newport.” Washington Post/Times Herald (July 13, 1970).

AP/Wide World Photos

Suzanne Vega

460

Women Icons of Popular Music

OVERVIEW During the 1980s and early 1990s, Suzanne Vega became the ﬁrst signiﬁcant and prominent folk-inﬂuenced singer/songwriter to emerge and experience success since the heyday of folk music in the 1960s. Using mostly an acoustic guitar, some experimentation, and a poetic approach to storytelling, her music calls to mind male forebears such as Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, and Leonard Cohen. Her restrained vocal style paired with her veiled but evocative examinations of emotions and relationships can sometimes give the listener the impression of a cool, impersonal, or mysterious songwriter, but that detached approach provides sufﬁcient distance for the songs to be rendered with a clear eye and verbal dexterity worthy of short ﬁction. Vega is not one for overstatement, passionate displays of guitar playing, or bold proclamations: She is an artist who is a master of subtlety. In many ways, her writing is quintessentially New York. Vega has spent most of her life living in the city and its rhythms, images, people, and tensions permeate her music—a kinship she shares with Lou Reed. Vega is perhaps best known for her unlikely hit “Luka,” a sad, evocative song that tells the story of child abuse narrated from the point of view of the child. With a plaintive delivery and careful use of repetition in the lyrics, Vega paints a haunting picture of a child who suffers in silence. The success of the song was a surprise to both Vega and her record label. It went to number three on both the Adult Contemporary and Billboard Hot 100 charts while the album it came from, Solitude Standing, peaked at number eleven on the Billboard 200 chart, undoubtedly helping it achieve gold status within three months of its release. (Eventually, it would go platinum some years later.) In 1988, the song earned her three Grammy nominations for Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Female Pop Vocal. In the early days of MTV, the music video possessed much power to communicate an artist’s message. The documentary-style, black-and-white video of “Luka” earned her an MTV Music Award for Best Female Video. The success of the song, with its spare acoustic treatment and poignant lyrics about a serious subject, indicated that it was indeed possible for a folk artist to experience some commercial success and that perhaps audiences would respond to music that dealt with substantive issues. Two years later, in 1990, Vega, along with Jeffrey Gold and Len Peltier, would win a Grammy for Best Album Package for the album Days of Open Hand. A remix of Vega’s 1990 single “Tom’s Diner” performed with the hip-hop group DNA went gold in 1990, as did her 1992 album 99.9 F, years later, in 1997. During much of the 1990s, Vega spent her time touring and working on two albums with producer and then-husband Mitchell Froom. Her partnership with Froom produced two interesting but at times polarizing albums, according to some critics—99.9 F (1992) and Nine Objects of Desire (1996). Nevertheless, the albums illustrate her willingness and ability to explore new sonic palettes and create new textures. From 1997 to 1999, Vega was a regular on

Suzanne Vega

461

the Sarah McLachlan–organized, all-women Lilith Fair circuit. Her personal life experienced some upheaval I see this album as an exquiwhen she and Froom had a daughter together in 1994 site, refined mating call of one but divorced in 1998. For her subsequent release of the most delicate and following the divorce, Vega returned to the unfet- refined and concealed creature tered, impressionistic songwriting of her earlier [s]on the scene. . . . This is albums with Songs in Red and Gray. The album was how secrecy woos her lover. heralded by critics as one of her strongest in over a —Leonard Cohen on 99.9 F decade. Although in terms of accolades and awards Vega has not amassed an extremely impressive number, her impact on the musical landscape in the late 1980s through the 1990s showed her to be one of the most dynamic artists to emerge—and sustain herself—through that time period. Her success paved the way for musicians such as Tracy Chapman, Indigo Girls, Michelle Shocked, Shawn Colvin, Sinéad O’Connor, Edie Brickell, and a score of others—many of them issueoriented songwriters who at least in their early releases were not afraid to tackle big and often taboo topics (see sidebar). As a practicing Buddhist, Vega has brought wisdom, insight, and a sharp, clear eye to her songwriting. Rolling Stone wrote about her third album, Days of Open Hand: “[I]t may be the strict beauty of that most riddling of faiths that lends her poetry its clear but complex grace” (Evans 1990). Vega released a best-of compilation Retrospective, The Best of Suzanne Vega (2003) and also Live at Stephen Talkhouse, which featured fourteen live tracks recorded in Amagansett, New York. In 2006, she signed with Blue Note Records—not so much an indication of a newfound jazz approach but based on her long, well-respected career and artistic integrity. Her ﬁrst album for the label, Beauty & Crime, was released in 2007 and is a collection of songs about New York City. Far from being a formulaic folk musician, Vega has explored and incorporated seemingly disparate genres into her own songwriting to create songs that are both captivating and cryptic. Her arrival on the music scene stretched the boundaries of folk music and those repercussions continue to be felt in the contemporary singer/songwriter scene that bubbled up nearly twenty years after her arrival. Perhaps Lauren Viera described her complexity as a songwriter best, writing in a 2001 issue of Rockpile magazine: “It’s a voice both meek and proud, hesitant and startling, familiar and haunting. It has the tendency toward multiple personality disorder, singing the tales of long-haired island-dwelling nymph, a gypsy-loving track romantic and a young victim of domestic violence” (Viera 2001).

EARLY YEARS Although she was born in California, Vega is most closely identiﬁed with New York City. Her parents divorced when she was two, and her mother (a computer analyst who could play jazz guitar) married Ed Vega, a teacher from

462

Women Icons of Popular Music

The Rise of Consciousness-Raising Rock When Suzanne Vega’s song “Luka” hit the airwaves in 1987, it surprised listeners and the music business alike for its frank content about child abuse. It emerged when other musicians were starting to make socially conscious music, too. The commercial and critical success of “Luka” hearkened back to the folk protest music of the 1960s. In the late 1980s, though, artists such as Tracy Chapman and Sinéad O’Connor wrote songs about politics, injustice, and social inequality, and the group 10,000 Maniacs, headed by singer Natalie Merchant, mined their own political beliefs for songwriting fodder to the tune of multiplatinum album sales and critical acclaim. African American singer Chapman’s breakthrough Top 10 single “Fast Car” talked about the American dream and the desire to escape one’s social limitations. With a simple melody, plainspoken lyrics, and acoustic guitar, the song helped catapult her eponymously titled debut to sales of triple platinum status within less than a year of its release and three Grammy Awards in 1988, including Best New Artist. Irish singer O’Connor gained attention— and notoriety—for arrestingly honest songwriting and consistently outspoken behavior, whether it was defending the IRA or famously ripping up an image of the Pope during her appearance on Saturday Night Live. Her stunning 1990 debut I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got is a tour-de-force of personal and political ruminations that went double platinum. The group 10,000 Maniacs, with its catchy folk-rock storytelling, presented a song about child abuse, too, with “What’s the Matter Here,” along with war (“Gun Shy”) and environmental concerns (“Campfire Song”) on its second album, 1987’s In My Tribe, without becoming too precious or preachy. Its sales grew slowly and organically, hitting platinum status two years after its release, but In My Tribe was undoubtedly buoyed by “Luka.”

Puerto Rico and a novelist. The family—which eventually included brothers Matt and Tim and sister Alyson—moved to Spanish Harlem where they lived for ﬁve years, followed by a ten-year stay on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The children grew up speaking both English and Spanish. In a vignette of New York City published by the New York Times, Vega wrote about the streets crowded with different types of people: kids from the projects, white liberals, and students from Columbia. Indeed, the days of her adolescence were marked by listening to the sounds, rhythms, and pace of her rough neighborhood of Spanish Harlem. By all accounts Vega was a shy but somewhat troubled child who would, along with her siblings, pick ﬁghts with boys or girls. City living, with its close, ethnically diverse quarters, meant the Vega children felt the need to assert themselves. In the stories she told at the beginning of her book The Passionate Eye, Vega detailed

Suzanne Vega

463

through poetry and ﬁrst-person narratives various key episodes in her childhood that paint her more closely I fingerpick a lot because I can as a tomboy. She included a journal entry titled “Writ- get more of a range of feeling ten After a Triumphant Fight” (age 12), whose ﬁrst from the guitar than I can line proclaims, “I’m the baddest girl in the world. I’m when I bash away with as bad as Super Fly.” The entry then detailed the ways a pick. in which the Vegas will make things difﬁcult for this person—“I can stare you down/Make you crawl on the ground.” Her mother instilled in her an inﬁnite sense of possibility, regardless of one’s gender; perhaps this is what enabled Vega, ironically, to speak up when she disagreed with others. It’s different for a child to grow up in New York City, she said. “There you have to prove yourself, and you can’t let any other kids mess with you. Not girls, and not boys.” Vega recalled her father’s advice about ﬁghting, such as “go for the biggest one” so you wouldn’t have to ﬁght each kid in the group. Defending family honor was key, too: If your brother gets into a ﬁght, you need to ﬁght, too. As the eldest, she was expected to be more responsible, and perhaps this was one way to do so—even though it sometimes caused problems. She also included the valuable lesson to avoid ﬁghts with girls because they are crazy, unfair, and mean. Sometimes, she said, a ﬁght can clear the air and eliminate any tension or problems; respect is garnered and a friendship develops. From her childhood she developed street smarts and a coping mechanism that has informed her songwriting process. She told the New York Times that she learned to become a keen observer by piecing information together and then describing things clearly, thereby making the rendering as objective as possible. As the “whitest kid on the block” of West 122nd Street in New York City with a Puerto Rican father, it was not always easy to be Suzanne Vega. She did not realize that she was not half Puerto Rican until she was nine years old. She said she always felt like an outsider, always felt different from her siblings. Her mother, who was from a Swedish-German family, was a quiet woman; her father had a Scottish-Irish-English background. Growing up, though, she identiﬁed with the kids in the neighborhood, who were either black or Hispanic. “I didn’t know what to identify with, and when you’re that young, you don’t really know what white means anyway” (Baker 2001). She would not ﬁnd out until her twenties after the success of “Luka” that her musical lineage came directly from her birth father, a man whom she only identiﬁed as Richard. He had been adopted, so he understood her feelings of not ﬁtting in. “I’d always thought that being a musician was something I’d just thought of myself, and then it turned out that Richard was a very talented pianist, and all of his side of the family were musically gifted” (Baker 2001). Growing up, her parents often sang folk songs around the house, in addition to listening to The Beatles, jazz, bossa nova, Motown, and pop music. Vega began playing the guitar at age eleven. Instinctively, she was drawn to

464

Women Icons of Popular Music

the music of singer/songwriters such as Bob Dylan and Lou Reed. It is probably fair to say that focusing on music allowed her some respite from neighborhood troubles. Vega’s ﬁrst onstage appearance took place in spring 1972, supporting legendary folk singer Pete Seeger at a beneﬁt for New York City schools. She performed along with her sister Alyson; they were selected along with other city students during auditions. Listening to Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Pete Seeger, Vega ﬁrst attempted writing her own songs around the age of fourteen. She attended New York City’s famed High School for Performing Arts to study dance, not music. Several years after supporting Seeger, Vega debuted her own material in a ﬁrst public performance. She played in January 1977 at a space in a New York church basement called The Pit. During the summers of her late teenage years (1977 to 1979), Vega spent time in the arts, whether it was working as a messenger for an arts company in Times Square, appearing in a medieval pageant play in summer 1979, or as a camp counselor in the Adirondack Mountains in New York in 1978. After high school, she studied literature at Barnard College at Columbia University, the alma mater of groundbreaking artists such as dancer/choreographer Twyla Tharp and performance artist Laurie Anderson. During college, she began to play at coffeehouses and folk festivals on the West Side and near Columbia University. Soon after, she started playing in Lower Manhattan, at the Bottom Line in Greenwich Village, and, most notably, at Folk City, a club on the Lower East Side where she debuted in June 1980 as an opening act for Michael Picasso. (Folk City is the establishment that gave Bob Dylan his start.) But it was a Lou Reed concert she attended in 1979 at Miller Theater at Columbia University that would transform her most signiﬁcantly. Impressed by his literate take on what she knew to be at times a harsh, unforgiving urban environment, she was instilled with the idea of what was possible as a folk artist. During this time, she befriended folk musician Jack Hardy and became a part of his collective of artists called the Greenwich Village Songwriter’s Exchange, who often got together on Monday nights at Cornelia Street Café in Greenwich Village. The Exchange has long served as a safe and open incubator for working songwriters in New York City. Vega became a regular there in the formative days of her career. During this time, she also contributed to a songwriter anthology issued by Fast Folk, a magazine and record label started by Jack Hardy that was designed to feature folk artists who were just starting out. Hardy has been credited as a mentor, either through Fast Folk or the Songwriter’s Exchange, to artists such as Vega, Shawn Colvin, Richard Shindell, Christine Lavin, the Roches, Lucy Kaplansky, and Michelle Shocked. To attend you had to write a song in a week—hence the moniker “fast folk.” Vega graduated from Barnard College in 1982 with a B.A. in English and worked a few day jobs, including one as a typist, while continuing to play and seek an audience for her music. By late 1982 she started playing at colleges

Suzanne Vega

465

and universities beyond the immediate New York area. Before she had even released her debut, she had shared People hear her voice and her the stage with folk luminaries such as Pete Seeger, guitar style, they think she’s Tom Paxton, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, and Janis very soft and pretty and Ian, and performed for then–New York City mayor slightly aloof. But if you listen Ed Koch at Gracie Mansion in New York City in July to her words, it’s somebody 1983. Music critic Stephen Holden of the New York telling you in a quiet voice the Times had been following her developing talent and most horrifying thing. chronicling her performances and, duly impressed, —Mitchell Froom, about the called her “an heir to the folk-pop tradition of Joan process of creating 99.9 F Baez, Judy Collins and Joni Mitchell” (Holden 1984). She eventually became the folk scene’s brightest prospect but still was unable to ﬁnalize a deal with a record company. After three years of rejection her managers Ron Fierstein and Steve Addabbo were able to land a deal with A&M Records, which had turned her away twice before. In 1983 she signed a contract with Addabbo producing and former Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye serving as co-producer. The emotional resonance of her music combined with only voice accompanied by an acoustic guitar really allowed her talent to shine through. At the time, acoustic music was not en vogue, but its independence—all you need is a guitar— matched her state of mind.

CAREER PATH Vega’s ﬁrst album, a self-titled release that came out in 1985, received much acclaim. The album sold 200,000 copies in the United States, which was a surprise to both Vega and her label. With songs about love and loss set in a distinct, unforgiving urban landscape, the ten tracks garnered comparisons to the music of Leonard Cohen, Janis Ian, and Joni Mitchell. The New York Times heralded Vega as “the strongest, most decisively shaped songwriting personality to come along in years” (New York Times 1985). David Fricke of Rolling Stone decreed, “[I]n spite of its occasional lyric riddles, Suzanne Vega is a remarkable album, because of the quiet power with which it expands the folk tradition” (Fricke 1985). Although the scenes she describes are often chaotic, changing, or otherwise uncertain, Vega’s voice is calm and unwavering, which helps to ground the experience and allow the listener into her world. In fact, her debut brought to the attention of listeners a voice that is in some ways unremarkable—it is not incredibly dynamic or impressive—but that has a capacity for expression. At times, the narrative ﬂow of her songs suggests an element of herself is more sharply in focus; other times, she observes from a slight distance. Many of the best and most artistically successful songs in her entire oeuvre manage to balance these two extremes.

466

Women Icons of Popular Music

The album went platinum in the United Kingdom, and its pensive song “Marlene on the Wall” ﬁrst became a hit there. Still a concert favorite, the song is, like many of Vega’s, set at a mid-tempo and weighs heavily on image-driven storytelling. Vega uses the idea of an image of a woman named Marlene on the wall, who perhaps functions as a mirror of a woman’s subconscious mind. Nevertheless, Marlene witnesses the parade of men who come in and out of the singer’s bedroom: “Marlene watches from the wall/Her mocking smile says it all,” Vega sings in the chorus. Vega said the song is about a poster of Marlene Dietrich that she had in her bedroom at one point in her life. “I was thinking about her perspective and if she had eyes and a brain, what would she be thinking about the activities happening in my room at that time. . . . [T]hat’s more information than you need, certainly,” she says on the live album after performing the song (Live at the Stephen Talkhouse, United Musicians, 2005). Another hit in the United Kingdom came in the form of the modest pop tune “Left of Center,” which chronicled the angst of a misﬁt so aptly that it was included on the soundtrack to the poignant and funny 1986 teen drama Pretty in Pink directed by John Hughes and starring Andrew McCarthy and Molly Ringwald. Other standout tracks on her debut include “Small Blue Thing,” in which Vega describes herself “like a marble or an eye, made of china made of glass/lost inside your pocket” as synthesizers rise and fall in the background and an acoustic guitar carries the melody. In The Passionate Eye, Vega recounts a story she told onstage before, presumably, performing the song “Small Blue Thing” about a girl in the neighborhood named Millie who was afraid of almost nothing. The song is speciﬁc, but also evasive—listeners get a sense of the narrator, but the narrator, like the marble she details, often slips out of grasp. Vega’s follow-up Solitude Standing (1987), again co-produced by Kaye, is generally regarded as one of her ﬁnest albums. Consequently, many fans and critics thought of it as a standard bearer against which she would be measured in later years. The album yielded the hit “Luka,” a tale of a child who lived on the second ﬂoor of the narrator’s building. The unsuspecting listener, though, is hit with the direct, heartbreaking impact of the lyric at the end of the chorus. Additionally, the song featured backup vocals from relatively unknown singer by the name of Shawn Colvin, who later became a success in her own right. Although David Browne started his Rolling Stone review with the sentence “Call Suzanne Vega uneasy listening,” his critique of the record was ultimately favorable. About “Luka,” Browne wrote that “only a writer as skillful and subtle as Vega could write a potent song about child abuse that gets your feet tapping while putting across its point” (Browne 1987). Artists have

From the time I signed a recording contract, I was badgered by so many pessimists that I expected to fall straight back into the folk scene. I was ready for it.

Suzanne Vega

curious relationships and feelings about the songs that made them famous, but Vega is still touched by “Luka,” which still generates mail from people who share their own stories of abuse with her. It is one of her most signiﬁcant and meaningful songs. The album was written after a period of writer’s block. Following Solitude, Vega had an accidental hit when the British dance band DNA took her a capella song “Tom’s Diner,” little more than a melodic, engaging poem, and set it against a thumping bass and dance beat, calling it “Oh Suzanne.” The song, with its hypnotic cadence, plays out like a sharply observed short story that tells of a slice of New York City life as Vega sits in a diner, drinking coffee, exchanging pleasantries with the owner, observing and eavesdropping on other people in the diner. After Vega discovered the piracy, she allowed for the single’s ofﬁcial release under its original title. The song subsequently became a hit in the United States and the United Kingdom, climbing to number ﬁve on the pop charts and ultimately going gold. In 1991, the compilation Tom’s Album brought various artists together for remixes of the song. Her next album, 1990’s Days of Open Hand, is noteworthy for a few reasons. The cover won a Grammy for packaging design, and one song featured another collaboration with twentieth-century composer Philip Glass, who arranged strings on the album’s “Fifty-Fifty Chance.”(Vega had written lyrics for Glass’s 1986 song cycle “Songs from Liquid Days.”) The songs on Days also reveal her deepening abilities as a songwriter. The album yields thornier tales than usual, especially via “Men in a War,” which describes disabled veterans, and “Those Whole Girls (Run in Grace),” which is a snapshot of arrested development. The darkness of Days has a balance, though, because of its sunniest tunes, such as the accordion-driven “Tired of Sleeping,” a tale of awakening, and the idyllic, radio-friendly “Book of Dreams,” which peaked at number eight on the Modern Rock Tracks chart. (Vega supposedly wrote this song to be a single.) The album beneﬁted from the close involvement of long-term colleagues Mike Visceglia (bass) and then-boyfriend/keyboardist Anton Sanko. Vega decided to co-produce the album with Sanko, and the involvement resulted in more emotionally driven lyrics and a tendency toward more consistently dark subject matter, albeit beautifully rendered—even suicide (“Fifty-Fifty Chance”) makes an appearance. Rolling Stone magazine’s Paul Evans described the album as less catchy than Solitude Standing, but with more subtle, economical, and effortless melodies. He also wrote that the album “is her hardest and loveliest music yet; it is distinguished by a prayerful intensity and a clean, sharp intelligence that announce a young artist fully come into her own” (Evans 1990). Evans compared her to the poets Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson, an apt observation considering their work shows an ability to create strong images and quickly shift among different, yet equally stark, emotional tones.

467

468

Women Icons of Popular Music

Middle Years: The Fruits of Musical and Personal Partnerships The somewhat genre-pushing nature of Days—Vega incorporated some sounds of world music into the arrangements—seemed to contribute to her approach on her next two albums, 99.9 F (1992) and Nine Objects of Desire (1996). She brought in experimental producer Mitchell Froom, whose involvement added complex textures and a musical expansiveness to these releases. Intrigued by his eclectic assortment of projects—at the time he had worked with Crowded House, Richard Thompson, and Elvis Costello—Vega thought that Froom was appropriate because he did not approach recording in a formulaic manner and could coax some of the inherent darkness out of her art. Working with engineer Tchad Blake, as Froom had done for several years, he brought an unorthodox, somewhat experimental approach to her music that gave it heft and hard edges. The result is a signiﬁcant departure from her previous material: 99.9 F has reverb on her vocals and garage-band percussion, which some critics thought was too much of a distraction from the songwriting. The collaboration also resulted in a relationship, as Vega and Froom started dating shortly after completing the album; had a child, Ruby, in 1994; and got married in 1995. Before its release critics were already anticipating that 99.9 would be Vega’s electronic album, but despite its drum machines and synthesizers, it remains at its heart an album created by a folk artist because the song—and its message—is paramount. The sounds are varied by design. “I set certain goals and rules for myself; to make each song really different, and each song really short. To hit and run instead of spending a long time on an idea; to have a lot of contrast. To make the loud songs loud and the sad songs sad, and the acoustic songs very acoustic,” Vega told Village View (Gubbins 1992). She was frustrated by her production involvement with Days, which she said left her feeling as though things were too shiny and labored with little room for spontaneity. Diversity of sound is deﬁnitely apparent. The metallic, pulsing “Blood Makes Noise” experiments with phrasing and mood; bass thunders along, and vocals are ﬁltered and layered, creating the effect at times of coming through a fuzzy, distorted radio speaker. Although the song’s sound is arresting, it is not really about anything speciﬁc: a hospital visit gone awry (the ﬁrst line addresses a doctor). The chorus does little to clarify: “Blood makes noise and it’s ringing in my ear/I can’t really hear you in the thickening of fear.” Nevertheless, “Blood Makes Noise” seems to be more an exercise in evoking an atmosphere, with what sounds like clanging pipes and pulsing blood, than relaying a speciﬁc anecdote. It certainly found an audience: The song hit number one on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. Vega does have some shining moments on 99.9 F that are not all electronically rendered. “In Liverpool” is a lilting waltz with a strong melody, whose only unusual production value is a tack piano mixed very quietly in the background.

Suzanne Vega

“Bad Wisdom” shows the perils of knowing too much, too soon, describing a child’s entreat of her mother. The song suggests the position of a child who thinks like an adult but who must still live, at least for the time being, in a child’s world. She sings, “I’ve gone serious and shy/And they can’t ﬁgure out why” and later says that the rules do not seem to apply anymore. She does not feel protected by the law, by the rules and abiding by them. Overall, the album shows signs of disillusionment and of what poet William Blake might describe as innocence (childhood) versus experience (adulthood). Songs such as “Bad Wisdom,” the short but powerful “When Heroes Go Down,” and “As A Child” each wrestle with this realization. The album is a complicated balance of information revealed and concealed; there is secrecy, mystery, and seduction in these songs, as they hint at what might be possible. The sound is heavy—the bass is featured prominently in the mixing—but by design. “We got very low to do this record. It’s the bass sounds, but also in the attitude I think in keeping what might normally be discarded . . . the distorted parts and the noise” (Vega 1999). The experiment, though, quickly paid off: it won Best Rock Album at the New York Music Awards and went gold. Some critics contended that Froom’s production style tainted Vega’s songwriting, but in truth, it allowed her voice to seem warmer than before, moving it more closely forward in the mix and allowing for each instrument to experience its resonance in a sufﬁciently open space. Indeed, the temperature—and title—99.9 F intentionally suggest a slight fever. “I felt that it described the stance of the album, not wildly feverish but off the norm enough to create tension, enough to give you a dizzy, hallucinatory feeling but not so much that you’re out of your mind listening to it. It seemed slightly hotter than maybe some of my other albums” (Vega 1999). The title track, slinky and funky, ﬁnds Vega observing, “[Y]ou seem to me/Like a man on the verge of running ninety-nine-point-nine Fahrenheit degrees.” Nine Objects of Desire (1996) reﬂects this more expansive sound as well, and although it, too, contains a signiﬁcant portion of programmed loops and electronic ﬂourishes, Vega’s voice feels buoyant. She is not trapped or limited by the production, as some critics had thought with 99.9 F. Thick with bass and reverb-laden instruments (from vocals to bass drums to the more obvious, guitars), the album is subtly seductive. Its material never wavers in its attention to detail as it focuses on ﬁnely honed characters and scenarios. This album beneﬁted from Froom’s deft involvement, lending weight to her compositions and keeping the acoustic guitar to a minimum: The instrument does not make a signiﬁcant appearance until three quarters of the way through, on the ode to love “World Before Columbus.” Nine Objects of Desire reﬂected great changes in Vega’s lyrical and musical perspective. The songs are more economical and cohesive than ever before. Most critics, though, agree that these two albums were commercial failures but artistically signiﬁcant because they showed her willingness to take risks with her music while remaining true to her roots.

469

470

Women Icons of Popular Music

“Stockings” is a ﬁrst-person tale of a call girl, “Honeymoon Suite” an uncharacteristically intimate glimpse of wedded contentedness set in a Paris hotel room. Lilting and spare, it is perhaps may be the closest song to autobiography that Vega has written. The album’s third track, the bossa nova– inﬂected “Caramel,” received modest airplay on Triple-A, noncommercial radio stations. The song begins with what can only be loosely described as wistful lament, likening a lover to sweets. Other standout tracks include the subtle feminist ode to “Lolita,” named in honor of the title character to Vladimir Nabokov’s novella. Vega calls out, in the ﬁrst line, almost as if she is addressing a girl she sees on a street corner in her neighborhood, “Lolita, almost grown/Lolita, go on home.” In the catchy, reverb-laden “No Cheap Thrill” Vega creates a metaphor about life, observing a card game that has gone too far. Both birth and death, respectively, are addressed in “Birth-day (Love Made Real)” and “Thin Man.” The life-changing and positive experiences of marriage and childbirth did not sustain the marriage, though. Vega and Froom split in August 1998, after he began dating the lesser-known (and not nearly as critically signiﬁcant) Vonda Shepherd, known for her appearances on the Ally McBeal show, who also sang the show’s theme. But Froom’s inﬂuence made a signiﬁcant mark on Vega’s music, with a production sensibility that both coaxed out and tastefully highlighted a seductive quality of her songwriting that lies latent and simmering below the surface. After some time, Vega collected herself and started working with longtime bass player Michael Visceglia. She returned to basics and released Songs in Red and Gray. Produced and arranged by Rupert Hine, known for his lush orchestral work with artists such as Rufus Wainwright and Duncan Sheik, the album’s low-key, mostly acoustic arrangements often receive the beneﬁt of string arrangements, and its songs suggest a return to her earlier, introspective story-songs. Songs in Red and Gray features veteran studio musicians such as guitarist Gerry Leonard and drummer Jay Bellerose. The album came out a few weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and her muted, contemplative palette seemed oddly prescient, especially considering her status as a native New Yorker. And then barely six months later, in April 2002, after calling in sick to his job in the World Trade Center on the day of the terrorist attacks, Vega’s younger brother Tim died at the age of thirty-six in his sleep from causes Vega did not disclose to the media. Vega wrote the songs and performed them at the revered Songwriters Exchange, a Monday night songwriting workshop that in more recent years has taken place at Jack Hardy’s home in Greenwich Village. She admitted that she had not attended much in previous years, but after losing nearly every associate—except her bassist—after the split from Froom, Vega returned to her roots and went back to the Exchange. “I had written two songs in four years,” she said, referring to two tracks that were contributed to the 1999 compilation Tried and True: The Best of Suzanne Vega after returning to Hardy’s in 2000. The album bears the fruits of a difﬁcult process: Its delicately

Suzanne Vega

stirring arrangements are an apt accompaniment to Vega’s cool vocals and the dark but hopeful story-songs that are her forte. Named for the battle—or perhaps coexistence—of head (gray) versus heart (red), the album’s thirteen tracks achieve an equilibrium between the two. Neither too smart and detached nor too emotional, Songs offers listeners a glimpse of what Vega has been observing since 1996. The standout track by far is “I’ll Never Be Your Maggie May,” in which the narrator rejects the role of what Phoenix New Times critic Charlie Bertsch described as “a desperate older woman.” He also described her voice as “a glass of ice water in your sun-dazed hand” (Bertsch 2002). Less inclined toward irony than some of her contemporaries, Vega was looking for something more meaningful. The song “If I Were a Weapon” is an open-ended fantasy in which her partner imagines that she is a gun, “Lethal at close range I guess/With silencer and stun.” But Vega then turns the tables, replacing the “I” with “you” and likening the person to a hammer. The stinging criticism could easily be directed at her ex-husband, or it could be a statement about her career with the goal of having her own message heard by fans. What’s most signiﬁcant, however, is the fact that songs like “I’ll Never Be Your Maggie May” could easily have appeared on earlier releases. Many critics wrongfully dubbed Songs her divorce album, but she admitted only three songs—“Soap and Water,” “If I Were a Weapon,” and its ﬁrst single “Widow’s Walk”—as being directly about her split with Froom. The subtly sassy “Maggie May” and the dense, percussively dark “It Makes Me Wonder,” she said, were written for “a younger guy I was seeing for a while, and the rest are other people entirely. You don’t want songs to be too intimate so that they only make sense to two people” (Viera 2001). In the coming years, Vega’s career would show some transitions, but she kept herself involved in myriad projects. To keep fans happy after Songs, in spring 2003 A&M released Retrospective: The Best of Suzanne Vega, a collection of twenty-one songs including hits, rarities, and signature tracks; a DVD collection of her videos bearing the same title was released two years later. A year after that, a live video called Suzanne Vega: Live at Montreaux (2004) was issued. Vega is also the subject of a documentary produced by Mooncusser Films and directed by Christopher Seufert, which includes performances from late 2002 through 2006, including the memorial concert for her brother Tim Vega and footage of Vega in the studio in late 2006 working on her next album. The ﬁlm has been in the works for several years and undergone a name change; it started as Blood Makes Noise and is currently called Some Journey. In 2006, Universal reissued her ﬁrst two albums. Side Projects and Film Contributions From early in her career, ﬁlmmakers have realized the potential of Vega’s music to connect with a movie-going audience. The song “Left of Center” was included in the 1986 John Hughes ﬁlm Pretty in Pink. Vega contributed some music to the soundtrack to the 1996 ﬁlm Dead Man Walking (“Woman

471

472

Women Icons of Popular Music

on the Tier: I’ll See You Through”). The ﬁlm chronicled the real-life story of Sister Helen Prejean (played by Susan Sarandon), who fought to save a death row inmate. The bossa nova–styled “Caramel” was used in the smart and sexy 2004 ﬁlm adaptation of the Patrick Marber play Closer, which starred Clive Owen, Julia Roberts, and Jude Law. She also contributed a song to the soundtrack to the romantic comedy The Truth About Cats and Dogs, the Disney compilation Stay Awake, a Grateful Dead tribute record called Deadicated, and, perhaps most ﬁttingly, the Leonard Cohen tribute Tower of Song. In 2003, she hosted the public radio series “American Mavericks,” which looked at groundbreaking composers of the twentieth century. A fair amount of time went by between the release of Nine Objects and Songs. Vega, though, has never completely stopped touring. Most notably in 2002 Vega hit the road in support of the beneﬁt fundraising album Vigil: N.Y. Songs Since 9/11, which was made available exclusively online through Internet retailers Amazon.com and CDBaby.com. After six years, Vega released Beauty & Crime on Blue Note in spring 2007. The record is a love letter to New York City, her longtime home, and its songs bear the city’s inﬂuence, whether it is in the reﬂective nature of “Ludlow Street” or the more direct, poetic personiﬁcation in “New York is a Woman,” in which she sings “New York is a Woman, she’ll make you cry/And to her you’re just another guy.” Vega also manages to invoke memories of September 11, 2001, with references to “smoke and ash still rising to the sky.” “Zephyr and I” strikes the listener with its upbeat rhythm and strong sensory imagery. Named for the grafﬁti artist who was a friend of her deceased brother Tim, the song remembers their shared bygone time in 1970s New York City. Less obvious connections are felt in vignettes about Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner’s long, tumultuous relationship in “Frank and Ava” and the personal reﬂection of “Bound,” which loosely relates to meeting her second husband for the ﬁrst time twenty years before she married him. This pop-folk record’s close focus on its subject matter keeps the songs moving forward with swiftness and disarming grace. The album contains eleven sharply observed stories that are widely praised as a smart, satisfying, and empathetic look at the city and its inhabitants. About the process, she said that “I pushed myself out of my comfort zone—to sing in keys I wouldn’t have sung in before, to work with different textures, to be unafraid of doing whatever sounded good to me. I wanted to make a modern classic” (Suzanne Vega Web site). Beauty & Crime achieves just that, with a careful mix of nostalgia and clear-eyed reﬂection, analog warmth coupled with digital embellishments.

MISSION, MOTIVATION, PROCESS In the introduction to her 1999 book The Passionate Eye: The Collected Writing of Suzanne Vega, she said that people often ask her to explain what

Suzanne Vega

inspires her. “Three things: what I know to be true; what I see, especially in the streets of New York City; and what I imagine.” The book contains early poems of Vega’s when she was a child, which she included because the subject matter resurfaced later in her songwriting as an adult. For example, the poem “By Myself,” which she wrote at age nine, turned into “Solitude Standing” at age twenty-seven. The poem is merely three stanzas of four lines apiece and manages to precociously illustrate the existential quandary of being alone but not being lonely. The ﬁrst line reads “I stand by myself/Not lonely at all.” Vega spent much time as a child in either her room and parks in New York City, which helps explain the poem’s idea of seeking solace in the presence of birds, deer, woods, and ﬁsh. The two items face each other—the lyrics of “Solitude Standing” on the left-hand page, and the poem “By Myself” on the right-hand side. The song’s lyrics portray an equally pensive scene, but it is more sophisticated; Vega has personified solitude as a woman who “stands by the window” with “her long cool stare and her silence.” The Passionate Eye also contains a poem called, somewhat confusingly, “The Rent Song” that could be one of her most autobiographical displays to date. Vega detailed the struggles and small delights of working as an artist in New York, employing repetition of the words “I am” and creating a scene that expresses both pragmatism and whimsy. As a coping mechanism, an escape perhaps, Vega imagined that she lived in Paris when she looked out the window. It is a rare glimpse at her thought processes. Although in this book Vega shared some journal entries, thoughts, poems, and other miscellany, she resisted complete disclosure. There are no page numbers in the book, it is not organized chronologically, and no dates accompany the entries; one needs to be well-versed in her material to determine a song from a poem from a journal musing. For example, an entry called “Thoughts,” which one might think is about her divorce, does not have a date or any other identifying details but says she is caught in a situation of “private rage on a public stage.” In this way, her writing reﬂects something personal, but not necessarily something speciﬁc. The elusiveness, naturally, matches her songwriting. During the course of an extensive interview with Leonard Cohen, conducted around the time of the release of 99.9 F and recalled in her book, Cohen observed that it is a bit guarded and asked if she considers herself that way. She replied that she did and said it stemmed back to her childhood years, which forced her to keep parts of herself private. Keeping one’s personal life clear and straight as a priority allowed her public persona to remain more elliptical. She said that she did not expect to be understood. “I’m surprised when people understand as much as they do of the songs, because I guess I don’t reveal a lot about the speciﬁc topics. You know when people say, ‘What’s your message?’ I never feel that I’m just revealing a message” (Vega 1999). When Cohen suggested in response that there was something ﬂirtatious, or seductive, about her refusal

473

474

Women Icons of Popular Music

to reveal, she remarked that she was interested in what is hidden. “I think it’s because the things that attract me in real life are the things that are not obvious and the things that are not simple” (Vega 1999). Although Cohen referred speciﬁcally to the album, he really sums up her essence. “You have managed to make austerity extremely seductive. There is a very seductive quality about your record, although nothing is given away, nothing is thrown away, nothing is revealed” (Vega 1999). It is not a small achievement. Vega said when she writes songs she writes what she thinks is truthful and does not worry about being judged. “When I write these songs I feel the important thing is that we know they are truthful and it doesn’t matter. . . . I’m putting the work out there because the work is the work, and the work is what I hope is beautiful and good, and the work is what will be around after I’m not here anymore” (Vega 1999). Such a statement reﬂects a pragmatism that Vega also ﬁnds comforting in Buddhism. She attributed some of her success—at least in the early years—to her religion. Her father took the family to a Buddhist meeting when she was sixteen, and she said that one by one, members of her family converted. “One thing that appealed to me with Buddhism was that it was a speciﬁc practice. It wasn’t abstract or praying to something unknown or outside yourself” (Costello 1987). She chants twice a day and said it’s a practical way of putting religion into your life. In an interview in the New York Times in 1984, Vega allowed for the possibility of a more direct link between Buddhism and songwriting. She told Stephen Holden, “Chanting also may have had an effect on my songwriting, since it’s repetitive—a rhythm that goes around and around— and a lot of my songs have striking, circular rhythms” (Holden 1984). By 2001, though, Vega had mostly abandoned practicing Buddhism, ﬁnding the organized part of it oppressive. As Vega experienced a bout of writer’s block in between Nine Objects and Songs, she told Rockpile, “I think there’s always that panic when you start writing again” and that “writing songs is a little like going to the gym: When you stop, it hurts” (Viera 2001). Vega spent much time prior to the release of Songs returning to the Songwriter’s Exchange that had nurtured her for many years prior to her rise to fame. She described the time there as a democratic back-and-forth of ideas and songs at Hardy’s house. “Jack makes pasta, and the rest of us bring wine or something else. There are all different levels of writing—lawyers who’ve got day jobs, young waitresses, some professionals, some not” (Viera 2001). In 2005, Vega reﬂected on her career in a press release accompanying the release of her live album. “I’ve had the freedom to do what I wanted, on my own terms and on my own timetable. I’m very handmade,” says Vega. “I see my career as a spiral, revolving around the central point of my guitar and lyrics” (Suzanne Vega ofﬁcial web site). Vega’s talent and artistic vision were immediately evident upon her breakthrough in the mid-1980s, which marked a signiﬁcant diversion in the bubble-gum, increasingly sexualized landscape of

Suzanne Vega

female pop stars. “Others thought what I was doing was a novelty. I wasn’t overtly pop at a time when the charts had Madonna, Cyndi Lauper and the Bangles. But I don’t look at it as breaking barriers. I just wanted to write poetic, complicated, emotional, urban songs. I made the music I wanted to make and expressed myself to the fullest” (Suzanne Vega ofﬁcial Web site). Always serious-minded and sensitive, Vega has been moved to lend her voice and her time to various causes and beneﬁt albums. Early in her career she appeared in a beneﬁt performance along with Laurie Anderson and Philip Glass to establish Tibet House in New York City, a nonproﬁt cultural and educational organization supervised by the Dalai Lama. She also participated in Amnesty International’s beneﬁt tour called “Human Rights Now!” in the late 1980s. After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Vega organized Vigil: N.Y. Songs Since 9/11, a CD designed to beneﬁt widows and family members of those who lost loved ones in the terrorist attacks; proceeds went to the Windows of Hope Family Relief Fund. Vega and other members of the Greenwich Village Songwriter’s Exchange wrote and recorded songs written expressly about the events. Other artists featured on the album include Richard Julian, Christine Lavin, and Jack Hardy. Vega was moved to create the album while attending the Exchange’s weekly workshop after the attacks. The album enabled working songwriters to make a difference and help those in need but also help themselves through their struggle to return to normal. Vega contributed her own composition, the stripped down and lovely “It Hit Home.” Jack Hardy, the pioneer of the Exchange, lost his brother Jeff, who had worked as a chef at the ﬁnancial ﬁrm Cantor Fitzgerald, in the attacks. The hardest part of the exercise was arranging the album’s chronology. “It was so emotional, I could only listen to the songs for a couple of hours a day” (Billboard 2002). The album was released by the independent label started by her manager at the time, Nancy Jeffries, called Conscious Music. Many songs were recorded in musicians’ apartments; the simple but arresting combination of voice and guitar pervade the tracks. In April 2006, she performed in Amnesty International’s Make Some Noise, a beneﬁt concert that found her sharing the bill with Collective Soul and Incubus. But since her career started, she has been involved with all kinds of human rights causes, particularly Amnesty International’s Working Group for Children and Casa Alianza, which provides services and care for orphans and street children of Central America.

LEGACY AND OTHER INTERESTS Vega parted ways with A&M after the release in 2003 Retrospective: The Best of Suzanne Vega. Her subsequent live album was released in conjunction with United Musicians Artists, set up by Aimee Man and Michael Penn and

475

476

Women Icons of Popular Music

their manager Michael Hausman as a way for artists to work together, retain all rights of ownership over their work, and share resources. Vega shares a manager with Penn and Mann, and, in conjunction with United Musicians and iTunes, released an album that is only available online, Live at Stephen Talkhouse, in 2005. In 2006 Vega made signiﬁcant changes in her life: She got remarried on February 13, 2006, this time to poet and lawyer Paul Mills of Los Angeles who she had met in 1981 at the club Folk City on West 4th Street in New York. The reception was held at her home in New York City. Several months after her marriage, in June, she announced on her Web site that Blue Note Records had signed her in anticipation of a spring 2007 release. She was well prepared and had been working on songs for several years. In 2002, she told a reporter for the New York Times that the material she had been working on, on the heels of the Vigil project, was socially conscious and a reﬂection of the current state of affairs of the country. Although such a musical focus may not seem a likely ﬁt for Blue Note, best known for its role in making jazz history, the label received much crossover success with the thoughtful artist Norah Jones in early 2002. After that point, Blue Note began to expand its roster, no doubt capitalizing on a changing landscape, and is currently also home to French singer Keren Ann, whose hushed vocal stylings and contemplative songwriting is a direct descendant of Vega’s and an offshoot of Jones’s. Vega will be remembered for her early experimentation with electronic forms—albeit not always of her own doing—with the song “Tom’s Diner,” which has been recorded and remixed over thirty times by many hip-hop artists, rappers, and deejays, including Destiny’s Child, Lil’ Kim, Ludacris, Danger Mouse, and Tupac Shakur. Vega’s work with “Tom’s Diner” presages the work of British folk artist Beth Orton, whose hybrid of folk and synthetic drums and loops on her debut Central Reservation owed much to Vega. Indeed, Vega’s career provides a glimpse at the possibilities of what record labels would take chances on, once upon a time, and shows the increasingly fragmented audience as the 1990s progressed and the Internet became a breeding ground for music, enabling artists who have been around for a while to reach their established fan bases on their own terms but also making it easier for up-and-coming artists to take control over their burgeoning careers. For what it is worth, from the debut of Solitude Standing, which peaked at eleven on the Billboard 200 chart, every subsequent album’s peak dropped: Days at 50, 99.9 F at 86, Nine Objects at 92 and, perhaps a result of the extensive time that passed, 2001’s Songs in Red and Gray, 178. But Songs debuted at twenty-two on the Top Internet Albums chart. Six years passed before her most recent studio release, Beauty & Crime, was released in 2007; it peaked at 129 on the Billboard 200 and Top Internet Albums charts. Vega is not at a point in her career where she will likely win over a new generation of fans, but instead, she will retain the loyal following and critical acclaim she has worked so hard to develop.

Suzanne Vega

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Solitude Standing. A&M, 1987 99.9 F. A&M, 1992 Nine Objects of Desire. A&M, 1996 Retrospective: The Best of Suzanne Vega. A&M, 2003 Beauty & Crime. Blue Note, 2007

FURTHER READING Altman, Billy. “Nine Objects of Desire. Review.” Rolling Stone 748 (November 1, 1996). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/suzannevega/albums/ album/243950/review/5942747/nine_objects_of_desire. Baker, Lindsay. “Myself, My Past.” The Guardian (October 6, 2001). Bertsch, Charlie. “Suzanne Vega: Songstress Paints the Cajun House Red and Gray.” Phoenix New Times (July 11, 2002). Available online at www.phoenixnewtimes .com/2002-07-11/music/suzanne-vega/. Billboard. “Good Works.” Billboard (May 25, 2002). Browne, David. “Solitude Standing. Review.” Rolling Stone 502 (June 18, 1987). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/103988/review/ 5943857? utm_source=Rhapsody&utm_medium=CDreview. Costello, D. “Suzanne Vega, Live at Royal Albert Hall.” Courier-Mail, Surry Hills, Australia (September 24, 1987). Evans, Paul. “Days of Open Hand. Review.” Rolling Stone 576 (April 19, 1990). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/103993/review/ 5943515/ daysofopenhand. Fricke, David. “Suzanne Vega. Review.” Rolling Stone 451 (July 4, 1985). Available online at www.rollingstone.com/artists/suzannevega/albums/album/109285/ review/5943542/suzanne_vega. Gubbins, Teresa. “Making Noise.” Village View (December 11, 1992). Holden, Stephen. “Suzanne Vega Melodies Draw on Folk Tradition.” New York Times (September 28, 1984). New York Times. “Up from the Underground Come Two Folk-Rock Idols.” New York Times (April 14, 1985). Nieves, Evelyn. “A Time of Elegies and Stories of Loss.” New York Times (April 21, 2002). Seufert, Christopher (director). Some Journey. Mooncusser Films. In post-production. See www.suzannevegaﬁlm.com. Vega, Suzanne. The Passionate Eye: The Collected Writing of Suzanne Vega. New York: Avon, 1999. Vega, Suzanne. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. See www.suzannevega.com Viera, Lauren. “Writing to Heal: Suzanne Vega.” Rockpile (December 2001).

477

Select Bibliography Amos, Tori, and Ann Powers. Tori Amos: Piece by Piece. New York: Broadway Books, 2005. Baez, Joan. Daybreak. New York: Dial Press, 1968. Baez, Joan. And A Voice To Sing With: A Memoir. Edison, NJ: Book Sales Inc., 1989. Bayley, Roberta. Blondie Unseen: 1976–1980. London: Plexus Publishing, 2007. Bego, Mark. Bonnie Raitt: Still in the Nick of Time. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002. Bego, Mark. Joni Mitchell. Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2005. Bego, Mark. Linda Ronstadt: It’s So Easy. Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 1990. Bego, Mark. Tina Turner: Break Every Rule. Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade Press, 2005. Bockris, Victor, and Roberta Bayley. Patti Smith: An Unauthorized Biography. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999. Brown, Jim. Emmylou Harris: Angel in Disguise. Kingston, Ontario: Fox Music Books, 2004. Brown, Terrell. Hip-Hop: Mary J. Blige. Broomall, PA: Mason Crest Publishers, 2007. Carson, Mina, Tisa Lewis, and Susan M. Shaw. Girls Rock! Fifty Years of Women Making Music. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2004. Che, Cathay. Deborah Harry: Platinum Blonde, A Biography. London: Carlton Publishing/Andre Deutsch, 2005. Collins, Tracy Brown. Hip-Hop Stars: Missy Elliott. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2007. Cross, Mary. Madonna: A Biography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007. Dobkin, Mark. I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You: Aretha Franklin, Respect and the Making of a Soul Music Masterpiece. New York: St. Martin’s, 2006. Echols, Alice. Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin. New York: Metropolitan/Henry Holt, 1999. Emerson, Ken. Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era. New York: Viking, 2005.

480

Select Bibliography

Franklin, Aretha, and David Ritz. Aretha: From These Roots. New York: Villard, 1999. Friedman, Maya. Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin. New York: William Morrow & Co., 1973. Gaar, Gillian. She’s a Rebel: The History of Women in Rock & Roll. New York: Seal Press, 2002. George-Warren, Holly, Patricia Romanowski, and Jon Pareles. The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. Good, Karen Renee. “Feeling Bitchy: Missy Elliott.” Hip Hop Divas. New York: Vibe Books/Three Rivers Press, 2001. Hajdu, David. Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2001. Harry, Debbie, Chris Stein, and Victor Bockris. Making Tracks: The Rise of Blondie. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1998. Hazen, Cindy, and Mike Freeman. Love Always, Patsy: Patsy Cline’s Letters to a Friend. New York: Penguin Books, 1999. Hirshey, Gerri. We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The True, Tough Story of Women in Rock. New York: Grove Press, 2001. Hoskyns, Barney. Hotel California: The True-Life Adventures of Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Ronstadt, Geffen, the Eagles, and their Many Friends. Hoboken, NJ; John Wiley & Sons, 2006. Jackson, Buzzy. A Bad Woman Feeling Good: Blues and the Women Who Sing Them. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005. McDonnell, Evelyn, and Ann Powers (eds.). Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop and Rap. New York: Delta Books, 1995. Morton, Andrew. Madonna. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002. Nash, Alanna. Dolly. Los Angeles: Reed Books, 1978 Nassour, Ellis. Honky Tonk Angel: The Intimate Story of Patsy Cline. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. Nathan, David. The Soulful Divas: Personal Portraits of Over a Dozen Divine Divas, from Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin and Diana Ross to Patti LaBelle, Whitney Houston and Janet Jackson. New York: Billboard Books, 2002. O’Brien, Lucy. She Bop II: The Deﬁnitive History of Women in Rock, Pop and Soul. London: Continuum Press, 2002. O’Dair, Barbara (ed.). Trouble Girls: The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock. New York: Random House, 1997. Parton, Dolly. My Life and Other Unﬁnished Business. New York: Harper Collins, 1995. Perone, James E. The Words and Music of Carole King. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006. Ross, Diana. Secrets of a Sparrow: Memoirs. New York: Villard, 1993. Taraborrelli, J. Randy. Diana Ross: A Biography. New York: Citadel Press, 2007. Tichi, Cecelia (ed.). Reading Country Music: Steel Guitars, Opry Stars and HonkyTonk Bars. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1988. Turner, Tina, with Kurt Loder. I, Tina: My Life Story. New York: Harper Collins, 1987.

Select Bibliography

Vega, Suzanne. The Passionate Eye: The Collected Writing of Suzanne Vega. New York: HarperCollins, 1999. Weller, Sheila. Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon, and the Journey of a Generation. New York: Atria/Simon & Schuster, 2008. Whiteley, Sheila. Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender. New York: Routledge, 1997. Whiteley, Sheila. Women and Popular Music: Sexuality, Identity and Subjectivity. New York: Routledge, 2000. Willis, Ellen. Beginning to See the Light: Sex, Hope, and Rock-and-Roll. New York: Knopf, 1981.

GENERAL MUSIC RESOURCES All Music Guide. www.allmusic.com Country Music Awards. www.cmaawards.com Country Music Hall of Fame. www.countrymusichalloffame.com Experience Music Project. www.empsfm.org The Recording Academy. www.grammy.com Recording Industry Association of America. www.riaa.com Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. www.rockhall.com Rock ‘N’ Roll Camp for Girls. www.girlsrockcamp.org/main/ Rockrgrl Magazine. www.rockrgrl.com Rolling Stone magazine. www.rollingstone.com

ARTIST WEB SITES Amos, Tori. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. www.toriamos.com Baez, Joan. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. www.joanbaez.com Blige, Mary J. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. www.mjblige.com Cline, Patsy. Homepage for Celebrating Patsy Cline, nonproﬁt organization. www .patsycline.com DiFranco, Ani. The ofﬁcial Web site for Righteous Babe Records and Ani DiFranco. www.righteousbabe.com Elliott, Missy. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. www.missyelliott.com Franklin, Aretha. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. www.sodamnhappy.com Harris, Emmylou. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. www.emmylouharris.com Harry, Debbie. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. www.blondie.net Hynde, Chrissie. Pretenders fan site. www.pretendersarchives.com Indigo Girls. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. www.indigogirls.com Joplin, Janis. Ofﬁcial Web site for the estate of Janis Joplin. www.ofﬁcialjanis.com King, Carole. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. www.caroleking.com Madonna. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. www.madonna.com McLachlan, Sarah. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. www.sarahmclachlan.com Mitchell, Joni. Well-researched and independently run Joni Mitchell Web site. www .jonimitchell.com

481

482

Select Bibliography

Parton, Dolly. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. www.dollyparton.com Phair, Liz. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. www.lizphair.com Raitt, Bonnie. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. www.bonnieraitt.com Ronstadt, Linda. Verve Records. www.vervemusic.group.com/artist/default.aspx?aid= -5970 Ross, Diana. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. www.dianaross.com Smith, Patti. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. www.pattismith.net Turner, Tina. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. www.ofﬁcialtina.com Vega, Suzanne. Ofﬁcial artist Web site. www.suzannevega.com

Index Italicized page references indicate photographs.

Aaliyah, 55, 57, 106, 109, 115 Abortion rights, 91 “About a Boy,” 431–32 Academy Awards, 250, 266, 324 “Acid Queen,” 449 Acuff, Roy, 69 Adams, Bryan, 451 “Adia,” 281–82 Adidas, 115 Adieu False Heart (Ronstadt and Savoy), 390 Afterglow (McLachlan), 274, 283–84 Ahern, Brian, 146, 156 Aid & Comfort, 393 AIDS awareness and fundraising, 62, 175, 270, 271, 288, 332, 393, 436 “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” 407–8 Aldon Music, 237, 239 All I Can Do (Parton), 322 “All I Want,” 300 “All My Life,” 377 “All That I Can Say,” 54 All That We Let In (Indigo Girls), 206 All the Best (Turner, T.), 441 All the Best: The Live Collection (Turner, T.), 457 All the Invisible Children, 457 All the Roadrunning (Harris and Knopﬂer), 142, 154–55 Almighty Fire (Franklin), 132 Always (Cline, P.), 67 Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era (Emerson), 235

Amazing Grace (Franklin), 123, 132 “Amber Waves,” 15, 18 “Amelia,” 303 American Doll Posse (Amos), 16 “American Life,” 267 American Life (Madonna), 255, 267 “American Mavericks” (public radio series), 472 American Music Awards, 53 Amnesty International, 475 Amos, Tori: career, 8–13; children, 14; early years, 4–8; on King, C., 238; legacy, 3, 20; miscarriages, 13, 14; mission, motivation, process, 16–17; music as tragedy response, 13–16; name selection, 8; other interests, 19–20; overview, 1, 2–4; themes, 17–19 Anamorph (ﬁlm), 173 And A Voice to Sing With (Baez), 34 Anderson, Dale, 90, 91 Anderson, Eric, 297 Andrews Sisters, 415 “Angel” (Franklin), 132 “Angel” (Madonna), 256 “Angel” (McLachlan), 282 Angel and the Snake, 164 Angel Band, 146 Angel Band (Harris), 150 Ani DiFranco (DiFranco), 90 Animal rights and rescue, 158, 192, 209 Ann, Keren, 476 Anthony, Polly, 19 Antinuclear issues, 371 Anti-sexual assault organizations, 3

484

Index Antiwar activism, 29, 30, 32, 39, 98, 462 Any Day Now (Baez), 37–38 Apple, Fiona, 4 Aretha (Franklin, 1961), 126 Aretha (Franklin, 1980), 133 Aretha (Franklin, 1986), 134 Aretha: From these Roots (musical), 139 Aretha Arrives (Franklin), 129–30 Aretha Franklin Scholarship Foundation, 139 Aretha Now (Franklin), 130 Aretha’s Gold (Franklin), 131 Ark Trust, 192 Arthur, Brooks, 249–50 Arthur Godfrey Talent Scouts (television show), 71, 72–73 Artist Conﬁdential (album compilation), 36 Asher, Peter, 382 “As We Go Along,” 240 At the Ryman (Harris and Nash Ramblers), 151 Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (ﬁlm), 256 Autoamerican (Blondie), 168–69 Babel (Smith, P.), 427–28, 436 “Babelogue,” 428 “Baby I Love You,” 130 “Baby Love,” 404 Bach, Erwin, 452, 457 Bacharach, Burt, 235 “Back Around,” 367 “Back in my Arms Again,” 404 Back on the Bus Y’all (Indigo Girls), 203 “Back on the Chain Gang,” 186 192 “Back Where You Started,” 441 Backwoods Barbie (Parton), 328 Bad Dog, 102 The Bad Plus, 176 Badu, Erykah, 47 Baduizm (Badu), 47 “Bad Wisdom,” 469 Baez, Joan: autobiographies, 26, 34, 41; awards and nominations, 25; career, 28–36; children, 30; Dylan and, 24, 28–29, 31, 37–38, 41; early years, 25–28; legacy and activism, 40–41; mission, motivation, process, 36–39; Mitchell and, 295; other interests, 39–41; overview, 23, 24–25; personal relationships, 30 “Baker Baker,” 11–12

The Ballad of Sally Rose (Harris), 150 “Ball and Chain,” 227 Ballard, Florence, 398, 400, 401, 402, 405 “Ball of Confusion,” 450 Bambada, 367 Barbone, Camille, 258–59 Barry, Jeff, 235, 238 Bassett, Angela, 452, 453 “Beat Biters,” 112 Beatles, 7, 379 “The Beat of Black Wings,” 310 Beatty, Warren, 263, 266, 299 “Beautiful Stranger,” 256 Beauty & Crime (Vega), 461, 472 “Because the Night,” 428 Beck, Jeff, 189 Become You (Indigo Girls), 205–6 Bedtime Stories (Madonna), 266 The Beekeeper (Amos), 15–16 “Been to Canaan,” 244 B.E.F., 450 Begin to Hope (Spektor), 4 “Be Happy,” 52–53 “Beneath Still Waters,” 148–49 Bern, Dan, 100 Bernhard, Sandra, 264 “The Best,” 453 Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (ﬁlm), 324 The Best of Blondie (Blondie), 169 Best of the Pretenders (Pretenders), 188 BET Award, 115 “Better be Good to Me,” 441, 451 Big Brother and the Holding Company, 214, 220–22, 227–28 Big Three, 215 “Big Yellow Taxi,” 299, 308, 311 Birdsong, Cindy, 405, 411 “Black Crowes,” 303 Blake, Tchad, 366, 368 Blessed Are . . . (Baez), 30 Blige, Mary J.: awards and nominations, 48, 53; career, 51–59; early years, 48–51; legacy, 63; mission, motivation, process, 59–62; other interests, 62–63; overview, 45, 46–48; personal relationships, 52, 53, 55, 56, 57; personal struggles, 48, 53, 55–56, 61; reputation, 48, 55 Blonde Ambition Live (video), 256 Blonde Ambition Tour, 264 Blondie, 162, 163, 164–70, 172, 173 Blondie (Blondie), 165–66

Index Blood, Sweat and Tears, 241 Blood Brothers (play), 250 “Blood Makes Noise,” 468 Blood Makes Noise (documentary), 471 “Blood Quantum,” 208 Bloom Remix (McLachlan), 285 Blowin’ Away (Baez), 31 Blue (Mitchell), 295–96, 299–301 Blue (Ross), 412 The Blue Album (Ross), 407 “Blue Bayou,” 384 Bluebird (Harris), 150 “Bluebird Wine,” 156 Blue Kentucky Girl (Harris), 148 Blue Oyster Cult, 425 The Blues Brothers (ﬁlm), 133 “Bobby Bobby Bobby,” 238 The Bodyguard (ﬁlm), 326 Body Language (Minogue), 135 Body of Evidence (ﬁlm), 265 La Boheme (opera), 385, 393 Bonaparte’s Retreat, 158 Bonnie Raitt (Raitt), 358–59 Bonnie Raitt and Friends (Raitt), 368 The Bonnie Raitt Collection (Raitt), 364 Bono, 48, 61 Bonoff, Karla, 383, 393–94 The Bootleg Series Volume 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975, The Rolling Thunder Revue (Dylan), 38 The Bootleg Series Volume 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964—Concert at Philharmonic Hall (Dylan), 38 “Borderline,” 259 “Born to Be Alive,” 258 The Boss (Ross), 409 “Both Hands,” 93 “Both Sides Now,” 297, 299, 311 Both Sides Now (Mitchell), 295 “Boulder to Birmingham,” 156 “Bound,” 472 Bowery Songs (Baez), 36 Bowie, David, 454 Boyd, Little Eva, 234, 239 Boys for Pele (Amos), 2, 12–13, 19 Bradley, Owen, 74, 76, 77, 78, 82 Brand New Dance (Harris), 150 “Brass in Pocket,” 184 Bray, Stephen, 258, 261 Break Every Rule (Turner, T.), 441, 451–52 “Breakfast in Bed,” 187

485 “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do,” 239 Break the Cycle, 119 The Breakthrough (Blige), 47, 48, 57–58 Bremner, Billy, 186 Bridge Entertainment Group, 19–20 “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” 132 Brieva, Lucho, 189, 192 Brill Building, 234, 235, 237–38, 240 Brokaw, Chris, 338, 339 Brooke, Jonatha, 102 Brooks, Meredith, 338 “Brother, Brother,” 245 Brown, Ruth, 370–71 Browne, Jackson, 301, 357, 371 Bubble gum music, 240 Buckingham, Lindsey, 215 “Building a Mystery,” 276, 281, 282 “Buried Alive in the Blues,” 226 Burmese refugee camps, 100 “Burning Up,” 258 “Busa Rhyme,” 112 Butler, Tony, 186 “By Myself” (Vega), 473 Byrds, 241 “California,” 300 “Call Me” (Blondie), 168 “Call Me” (Franklin), 131, 137–38 Campbell, Jo-Ann, 238 “Campﬁre Song,” 462 “Canary,” 340 Canciones de mi Padre (Ronstadt), 377, 387 “Candy Man,” 357 “Can’t Get You Out of My Head,” 135 “Can You Hear Me,” 115 Capital punishment, 100, 101 “Caramel,” 470, 472 “Carey,” 300 Carey, Mariah, 135 Carlisle, Brandi, 206 Carole King: Making Music With Friends, A Concert for Our Children, Our Health and Our Planet, 250 Carole King: The Living Room Tour, 235, 247 Carpenters, 244 Carry It On (Baez), 30 Carry It On (documentary), 30 Carter, June, 80 “Case of You,” 300 Cash, Rosanne, 214, 229 Cast (play), 172

486

Index The Cas Walker Farm and Home Hour (television show), 319 “Caught A Lite Sneeze,” 13 “Causing a Commotion,” 263 CBGB, 420 Celebrating Patsy Cline (nonproﬁt organization), 83 Censorship issues, 393 Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, 209 Central Reservation (Orton), 476 “Chain of Fools,” 130 Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm (Mitchell), 304–6, 310 Chamberlain, Matt, 10 Chambers, Martin, 183, 185, 186, 188, 190–91 Chapman, Tracy, 199, 462 Charity Rap Fest, 62 Charles, Ray, 367–68 Che, Cathay, 175 Cheap Thrills (Big Brother and the Holding Company), 215, 222–23, 226, 228 Chelsea Hotel, 424 “Chelsea Morning,” 298–99 Cheney, Dick, 198 Cher, 215 Chicago, 241 “Child of Mine,” 242 Children of the Eighties (Baez), 33 Children’s books, 256, 270, 414 Children’s issues, 270, 288, 414, 457, 460, 462 Children’s television, 236 “Chinese Café/Unchained Melody,” 304 “Chopsticks,” 342 “Christmas in Washington” (Earle), 36 Ciccone, Christopher, 269 Cimarron (Harris), 149 “Cinco de Mayo,” 342 “Circle,” 280 “Circle Dance,” 366 “Circle Game,” 299, 311 The City, 241 City Streets (King, C.), 247 Civil rights, 39, 139, 245 Clash, 183 Cleveland, James, 124 Cline, Gerald, 70 Cline, Patsy: awards and nominations, 74; car accidents, 78–79; career, 71–79; children, 73, 78; death, 80; early years,

68–70, 81; legacy, 82–84; marriages, 70, 71, 73, 77, 78, 80; mission, motivation, process, 80–82; name change, 69; overview, 65, 66–67 Closer (ﬁlm), 472 “Closer to Fine,” 196, 200 Clothing lines, 115, 256, 270, 318 Clouds (Mitchell), 294, 295, 298–99 “Club Manhattan,” 449 Coal Miner’s Daughter (ﬁlm), 83 “Coat of Many Colors,” 317, 321, 330 Coat of Many Colors (Parton), 321 Coat of Many Colors (Parton and Sutton), 317, 319, 330 Cobain, Kurt, 432 Cohen, Herb, 379 Cohen, Paul, 70 “Cold Rock a Party,” 109 Collins, Judy, 297 Color Me Grey (Ray), 198 The Color Purple (ﬁlm), 451 Colour of Your Dreams (King, C.), 247 Colvin, Shawn, 466 Combs, Sean: Blige and, 50, 51, 52, 57, 60; Elliott and, 108, 109; Franklin and, 138 Come Away With Me (Jones), 82 Comebacks, 135 Come From the Shadows (Baez), 30 Come On Now Social (Indigo Girls), 205 “Come See About Me,” 404 “Come Together,” 448 Companion and Dimension, 239 “Complex Person,” 189 “Complicated,” 349 Concerts for a Landmine Free World (beneﬁt album), 157 Confessions on a Dance Floor (Madonna), 256, 268 The Confessions Tour, 268 Control (Jackson, J.), 135 The Cookbook (Elliott), 116, 118 Copeland, Calvin Clinton, 5 “Cop that Sh#!”, 115 The Coral Sea (Smith, P.), 432 “Cornﬂake Girl,” 12 Corso, Gregory, 421 Cosmetic spokespeople, 62, 175 The Country Bears (ﬁlm), 367 “Country Road,” 242 Court and Spark (Mitchell), 295, 301–2 Cowboy Junkies, 82

Index Cowboy Mouth (play), 424, 434 Cowgirl’s Prayer (Harris), 151 “Coyote,” 303 “Crazy,” 67, 78, 79 “Crazy for the Blues” (concert), 83 “Crazy for You,” 256, 261 “Crazy Game,” 199 “Criminal” (Apple), 4 Critical Resistance beneﬁt, 100 Crosby, David, 246, 297 Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, 297, 298, 299 Crowell, Rodney, 156, 159 “Crucify,” 10 “Cry Baby,” 215 Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind (Ronstadt), 387–88 Crystals, 240 Cunningham, Ken “Wolf,” 131–32 The Curse of Blondie (Blondie), 172 Curtis, Catie, 40 Curve magazine, 87 Daemon Records, 208 Damita Jo (Jackson, J.), 135 Dance for Me (Blige), 46, 47 “Dance of the Seven Veils,” 340 “Dancing Barefoot,” 429 Dangerous Game (Madonna), 265 Danoff, Bill, 156 Da Real World (Elliott), 106, 108, 112–13 Dark Chords on a Big Guitar (Baez), 25, 35 Daughtrey, Jay Dee, 425, 430, 431 David, Hal, 235 David’s Album (Baez), 30 Davies, Ray, 185, 192 Davis, Alana, 87, 94, 100 Davis, Billy “Tyran Carlo,” 125 Davis, Clive, 133 Davis, Miles, 295, 309 Daybreak (Baez), 26 “Day Dreaming,” 138 Days of Open Hand (Vega), 460, 461, 467 Dead Man Walking (ﬁlm), 471–72 Deal sisters, 191 Dean, Carl, 320 Dean, Jimmy, 81 “Dear Mr. President,” 198, 206 “The Death of Emmitt Till,” 29 Death penalty, 100, 101 Deborah Harry: Platinum Blonde (Che), 175 Debravation (Harry), 171

487 Dedicated (album compilation), 472 Dedicated to the One I Love (Ronstadt), 377, 388–89 Def, Dumb & Blonde (Harry), 171 DeMann, Freddie, 260 Desire (Dylan), 147 Desperately Seeking Susan (ﬁlm), 261, 262, 270 Desperately Seeking Susan (play), 271 Despite Our Differences (Indigo Girls), 197, 206 Diamonds & Rust (Baez), 24, 31 Diamonds & Rust in the Bullring (Baez), 34 Diana (Ross), 409–10 Diana and Marvin (Ross and Gaye), 408 Dick, Charlie, 71, 73, 77, 78, 80 Dick Tracy (ﬁlm), 263, 270 “Different Drum,” 379 Different Drum (Ronstadt), 382 DiFranco, Ani: appearance, 87, 90; career, 90–98; early years, 88–90; independent record labels, 100–102; merchandise, 101; mission, motivation, inspiration, 98–100; nicknames, 88; overview, 85, 86–88; personal relationships, 87, 89, 95, 97 Dilate (DiFranco), 87, 94 Dion, Celine, 247 La Diva (Franklin), 122 Divas, 139 Divas Live, 456 “Divorce Song,” 336 Dixie Chicks, 75 Dixie Stampede, 316, 331–32 DJ Timmy Tim, 108–9, 110–11, 112, 113, 116–17 DNA, 460, 467 Dog Eat Dog (Mitchell), 304 Doherty, Denny, 215 “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind,” 368 Dolly (television variety show), 316 Dolly: My Life and Other Unﬁnished Business (Parton), 319, 327 Dolly Parton Enterprises, 332 Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library program, 332 Dolly Records, 329 Dolly’s Dixie Fixins Cookbook (Parton), 332 Dollywood, 316, 331 Dollywood Foundation, 332 Domestic abuse, 119, 440

488

Index Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter (Mitchell), 304 “Don’t Be Commin’ (In My Face),” 111 Don’t Cry Now (Ronstadt), 381–82 “Don’t Ever Leave Me Again,” 82 “Don’t Get Me Wrong,” 187 “Don’t Have Time,” 337 “Don’t It Make You Wanna Dance,” 355 “Don’t Know Much,” 377, 387 Don’t Look Back (ﬁlm), 24, 37, 38 Down From the Mountain, 153 “Down On Me,” 215 “Down to You,” 294, 302 Do You Know Where You’re Going To (Ross), 408–9 Dr. Dre, 61 “Drawn to the Rhythm,” 278 Dreamgirl: My Life as a Supreme (Wilson), 411 Dreamgirls (play and movie), 411 “Dreamlike I Wander,” 246 Dream of Life (Smith, P.), 430 Drifters, 240 Drowned World Tour, 267 Duarte, John, 41 Dylan, Bob: Baez and, 24, 28–29, 31, 37–38, 41; Mitchell and, 295, 297, 300; music labels, 308 Eagles, 381 “Eagle When She Flies,” 330–31 Eagle When She Flies (Parton), 316, 317, 326 Earle, Steve, 36 Early Work: 1970–1979 (Smith, P.), 431 Easter (Smith, P.), 426, 428–29 Easy Rider (ﬁlm), 241 Eaten Alive (Ross), 411 Eat to the Beat (Blondie), 167–68 Edmonds, Kenny “Babyface,” 247 Ed Sullivan Show, 404 Educated Guess (DiFranco), 87, 97 Education fundraising, 63, 289, 332 Edwards, Dennis, 138 Edwards, Kenny, 379, 380, 392 18 Essential Songs (Joplin), 227 Elastica, 191 Electric Honey (Luscious Jackson), 175 The Electrifying Aretha Franklin (Franklin), 127 Elegy (ﬁlm), 173 Elite Hotel (Harris), 147

The Ellen James Society, 208 Elliot, Cass, 215, 221 Elliott, Missy: appearance, 111; awards and nominations, 107–8, 114, 115, 116; career, 110–17; early years, 108–10; legacy, 118–19; mission, motivation, process, 117–18; other interests, 119; overview, 105, 106–8 “Elsewhere,” 280 Elvis Costello, Joni Mitchell and the Torch Song Tradition (Smith, L. D.), 309–10 The Emancipation of Mimi (Carey), 135 Emerson, Ken, 235, 240 Eminem, 112 Endless Love (ﬁlm and soundtrack), 398, 410 English Rose (Madonna), 270 “Enough Crying,” 60 Environmental issues: albums/songs with themes of, 247, 462; energy sources and solutions, 371, 372; green space preservation, 250, 372; rainforest preservation, 192; tours and albums beneﬁting, 208, 209, 210, 370 Erotica (Madonna), 265 Essential Janis Joplin (Joplin), 227 Etheridge, Melissa, 198 European Tour (Baez), 31 Evangeline (Harris), 149 Evans, Jon, 15 Evergreen Volume 2 (Stone Poneys), 379 Evers, Rick, 246 “Everybody,” 258, 259 “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool,” 139 Everyday is a New Day (Ross), 411 Evita (ﬁlm), 263, 266, 270–71 Evolve (DiFranco), 87, 97 Exchange Club/Tina Turner Child Abuse Center, 457 Exile in Guyville (Phair), 336, 337, 339–41, 347 Exile on Main Street (Rolling Stones), 336, 340, 347 The Exonerated (play), 63 “Express Yourself,” 258, 264 “Extraordinary,” 337 “Face Up and Sing,” 98 Fairport Convention, 297 “Faithless Love,” 382 “Fallen,” 284 Fallen Angels, 146

Index “Family Affair,” 61 Fantasy (King, C.), 245 Farewell Angelina (Baez), 29, 37 Farewell Song (Joplin), 214 Farm Aid, 370, 371 Farmland preservation, 41, 370, 371 Farndon, Pete, 183, 185 “Fast Car,” 462 Fast Folk (magazine), 464 “Feeling of Falling,” 366 Feels Like Home (Ronstadt), 388 Fellow Workers (DiFranco and Phillips), 87, 100 Feminist Majority Foundation, 100 Fiddle and the Drum (ballet), 312 “Fidelity” (Spektor), 4 Fifty Eggs (Bern), 100 “Fifty-Fifty Chance,” 467 50 Cent, 58 “Fire and Rain,” 242 “The First Day in August,” 244 First Steps: The International Response to the Global Landmine Crisis (documentary), 158 Fishburne, Laurence, 452, 453 Fisher, Scot, 91, 101 Fleetwood Mac, 215 “Flower,” 341 Flying Burrito Brothers, 145 FM (ﬁlm), 393 “A Fool in Love,” 440, 444, 454, 455 “Fools Must Die,” 189 The Force Behind the Power (Ross), 411 Foreign Affair (Turner, T.), 441, 452–54 For Sentimental Reasons (Ronstadt), 376, 386 For the Roses (Mitchell), 301 Foster, Malcolm, 186 4 All the Sistas (Elliott and Sista), 109 Fowler, Wally, 69 Franklin, Aretha: awards and honors, 123, 130, 131, 133, 134, 135; career, 126–36, 138–39; children, 125, 127, 131; early years, 123–26; legacy, 139; mission, motivation, process, 136–38; other interests, 139; overview, 121, 122–23; personal relationships, 123, 125, 127, 128, 130–32, 135, 138 “Frederick,” 429 The Freedom Sessions (McLachlan), 280 “Free Man in Paris,” 302 “Freeway of Love,” 123, 134

489 The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (Dylan), 37 Frenesi (Ronstadt), 377, 388 Friedman, Jane, 425 Frischmann, Justine, 191 From the Choirgirl Hotel (Amos), 3, 13–14 Froom, Mitchell, 366, 460, 465, 468, 470 Frou Frou, 102 “Fuck and Run,” 340–41 Full Tilt Boogie Band, 225–26 Fumbling Towards Ecstasy (McLachlan), 274, 275 279 Fundamental (Raitt), 366 “The Fundamental Things,” 366 Furtado, Nelly, 113 G. P. (Parsons), 146 Gabriel, Peter, 101, 306 “Galileo,” 203 The Gap, 115, 192 Garbage, 191 Garrett, Sean, 60 “A Gathering of Tribes” (beneﬁt event), 209 Gay, Connie, 74 Gaye, Marvin, 245, 408 Gay rights issues and awareness, 175, 198, 209–10, 256 Geffen, David, 299, 302 Genius Loves Company (album compilation), 367–68 Georgia Network to End Sexual Assault, 210 Gere, Richard, 421 Get Close (Pretenders), 187 Get Closer (Ronstadt), 385 Get It (Ike and Tina Turner Revue), 446 Get It Right (Franklin), 134 “Get It While You Can,” 215 “Get Out Her Vote” (voting campaign), 100 “Get Ur Freak On,” 107, 113–14 “Ghost Dance,” 429, 431 GHV2 (Madonna), 267 Gilchrist, Andrew, 95 The Gilmore Girls (television show), 251 Gilroy, Dan, 258 Giovanni, Nikki, 136 “Girl,” 10 Girl groups, 234, 239, 415 The Girlie Show, 265, 270 Girlysound (Phair), 339 Give It Up (Raitt), 355, 359–60 “Give It Up or Let Me Go,” 360

490

Index Gliding Bird (Harris), 144–45 “Glitter in their Eyes,” 432 “Gloria,” 426, 435 The Glow (Raitt), 359, 361 “God,” 11, 18 “Godspeed,” 426 Gofﬁn, Gerry, 234, 237–41, 246, 248, 249 Gofﬁn, Louise, 250–51 Gofﬁn Kondor, Sherry, 250, 251 Gold, Andrew, 392 Golden Globe Awards, 266, 324, 452, 453 The Gold Mind, 106, 110 Gone Again (Smith, P.), 431–32 Gone From Danger (Baez), 35 “Goodbye to Guyville,” 339 “Good Enough,” 279–80 “Good Man, Good Woman,” 365 “Good Woman Down,” 58 Gordy, Berry, Jr., 125, 398, 401, 403, 405, 406, 407, 408 412 The Gospel According to Janis (ﬁlm), 230 “Gossip Folks,” 114 Gottehrer, Richard, 165 “Go West,” 342 Grace of My Heart (ﬁlm), 235 Grand Funk Railroad, 240 Grand Puba, 50–51, 52 The Grass is Blue (Parton), 317, 327 Grateful Dead, 221 Great American Songbook (Stewart), 412 Greatest Hits (1986) (Parton), 317 Greatest Hits (Cline, P.), 67 Greatest Hits (Ronstadt), 384 Green, Debbie, 38 Green Flag Song (art exhibition), 311 Green Highway, 372 Green Light (Raitt), 362, 368 Greenpeace, 192, 209 Greenwich, Ellie, 235, 238 Greenwich Village Songwriter’s Exchange, 464, 470, 474, 475 Grievous Angel (Parsons), 146 Growing Pains (Blige), 63 Guerin, John, 302 Guidera, Tom, 146 Gulf Winds (Baez), 31 Gun control, 209 Gung Ho (Smith, P.), 432, 437 “Gun Shy,” 462 Guyville, Chicago, 339 Hailey, K-Ci, 50, 52, 53

Hairspray (ﬁlm), 170 Hall, John, 371 Hallman, Mark, 246 Hallwalls, 99, 101 Halos and Horns (Parton), 328 “Hammer and a Nail,” 202 Hammond, John, 126, 127, 131 Hancock, Herbie, 305 Hand Sown Home Grown (Ronstadt), 381 “Hanky Panky,” 263 Hardy, Jack, 464, 474, 475 Harris, David, 30 Harris, Emmylou: awards and nominations, 143, 148–49, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 325; career, 146–55; children, 145, 149; early years, 143–45; guitars named after, 158; legacy, 158–59; mission, motivation, process, 155–57; other interests, 157–58; overview, 141, 142–43; personal relationships, 144, 145, 146, 149, 150; Ronstadt and, 142, 146, 147, 377, 383, 392, 394; Ronstadt and Parton collaborations, 325, 389 Harry, Debbie: with Blondie, 164–70, 172; early years, 163–66; legacy, 175–77; mission, motivation, process, 173–75; other interests, 175; overview, 161, 162–63; punk rock fashion, 176; solo career, 170–71, 173 Hart, Gary, 250 Hashimoto’s disease, 389 Hasten Down the Wind (Ronstadt), 383, 392, 394 “Have a Heart,” 355, 363 Heap, Imogen, 102 “Hear Me Lord,” 367 Hear Music, 308 Heartaches (Cline, P.), 67 Heartbreaker (Parton), 316 Heartbreak Express (Parton), 325 Heart Like a Wheel (Ronstadt), 146, 382 “Heart of Glass,” 167, 173–74, 176 Heartsongs: Live from Home (Parton), 327 “Heat Wave,” 383 Heavy (ﬁlm), 171 Hecht, Donn, 72 “He Hit Me (And it Felt Like a Kiss),” 240 Hejira (Mitchell), 303–4 “Hello God,” 328 Helms, Chet, 219, 220 “Help Me,” 302

Index Hendricks, James, 215 Hendrix, Jimi, 226, 229 Henry, Joe, 86 Here You Come Again (Parton), 316, 317, 322 Her Man, His Woman (Ike and Tina Turner Revue), 446 “He Think I Don’t Know,” 48, 57 “Hey Jupiter,” 13 “Hey Mister, That’s Me Up On the Jukebox,” 383 Hey Now Hey (Franklin), 132 Hill, Dave, 183 Hill, Lauryn, 47, 54 Hillman, Chris, 145 The Hissing of Summer Lawns (Mitchell), 303 Hits (Mitchell), 307 Hobson, Andy, 188 “Hold On,” 279 “Hold On! I’m Coming,” 133 Hole, 437 “Holiday,” 256, 259 Holland-Dozier-Holland, 403, 404, 405 Hollander, Sam, 247 Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, 451 Holy Trinity Episcopal Church beneﬁt concert, 158 “Holy War,” 308 “Home,” 278, 279 Home (Dixie Chicks), 75 Home Plate (Raitt), 361 Honest Lullaby (Baez), 31 Honeyman-Scott, James, 183, 185, 186, 192 “Honeymoon Suite,” 470 Honky Tonk Angel (Cline, P.), 66 Honor (beneﬁt CD), 209 Honor the Earth (beneﬁt tour and CD), 208, 209, 210, 370 “Horses,” 12 Horses (Smith, P.), 421, 426, 435, 436 Hoskyns, Barney, 380 Hot Band, 147 “Hot Boyz,” 112, 113 Hotel California (Hoskyns), 380 “A House is Not a Home,” 123 Houston, Whitney, 326 How Stella Got Her Groove Back (McMillan), 54 Hughes, Randy, 76, 80 “Human,” 188–89 Humanitas International, 32

491 Human rights issues, 32, 33, 100, 101, 175, 245, 475 “Human Rights Now!,” 475 Hummin’ to Myself (Ronstadt), 390 The Hunter (Blondie), 169–70 The Hunter (Ike and Tina Turner Revue), 448 Hurricane Katrina, 98, 101, 158 Hurt, John, 357 Hynde, Chrissie: career, 184–90; children, 185, 188; early years, 181–83; legacy, 193; mission, motivation, process, 190–92; other interests, 192; overview, 179, 180–81; personal relationships, 185, 187, 188, 189, 192; ten commandments of female rock stars, 181 I, Tina (Turner, T., and Loder), 452, 453 “I Ain’t Gonna Let You Break My Heart Again,” 370 “I Came to the City,” 297 “I Can’t Believe What You Say,” 446 “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still In Love With You),” 377, 382, 383 “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” 355, 365 “I Can’t See New York,” 15 “Ice Cream,” 280 “Icicle,” 12 I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got (O’Connor), 462 “I Don’t Wanna Fight,” 452 “If,” 308 “I Fall to Pieces,” 67, 77–78 “I Feel the Earth Move,” 242, 243 “If I Were a Weapon,” 471 “If Your Girl Only Knew,” 109 “I Got a Crush On You,” 412 I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama! (Joplin), 214, 224–25 “I Go to Sleep,” 185 “I Got You Babe,” 187, 215 “I Had a King,” 298 “I Idolize You,” 440, 445 Ike and Tina Turner Revue, 440–49, 454–55 Ike & Tina Turner, 448 Ike & Tina Turner and the Ikettes in Person, 448 Ike & Tina Turner’s Greatest Hits, 446 “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me),” 123, 135

492

Index “I’ll Be There for You’/You’re All I Need to Get By,” 48 “I’ll Never Be Your Maggie May,” 471 “I’ll Stand By You,” 188 Illuminations (Rimbaud), 423 I Love You (Ross), 412 “I’m a Bitch,” 338 Imagination Library, 332 I’m Breathless: Music From and Inspired By the Film Dick Tracy (Madonna), 263, 264 “I’m Coming Out,” 398, 409–10 “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me,” 405 “I’m in the Mood,” 354 The Immaculate Collection (Madonna), 255, 265 I’m Not Dead (Pink), 198, 206 Imperfectly (DiFranco), 93 “I’m Talking,” 111 Income tax evasion, 29, 30 Indigo Girls (Emily Saliers and Amy Ray): awards and nominations, 196, 200, 201, 202, 203; Baez and, 40; career, 200–206; early years, 197–200; lesbianism and, 197, 198, 209–10; mission, motivation, process, 206–8; name origins, 199; other interests, 208–10; overview, 195, 196–97; voting awareness tour with DiFranco, 100 Indigo Girls (Indigo Girls), 196, 200, 209 Individually Twisted (Harry and Jazz Passengers), 171 “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You),” 129 I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You) (Franklin), 129, 136, 137 Ingram, James, 386 “In Liverpool,” 468 In Love (Harry and Jazz Passengers), 171 In My Tribe (10,000 Maniacs), 462 Internet, 20, 36 “In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad),” 321 “Into the Fire,” 278 “Into the Groove,” 258 Iovine, Jimmy, 430 I Remember Patsy (Lynn), 67, 82 Isaacs, Kendu, 55, 56, 57 “I Say a Little Prayer,” 130 Isbin, Sharon, 41 “I Should Of,” 189 Islands in the Stream (Parton and Rogers), 317

Isle of View (Pretenders), 188, 192 “It Hit Home,” 475 “It Makes Me Wonder,” 471 “It Might As Well Rain Until September,” 239 “It’s Gonna Take Some Time,” 244 “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine”, 455 “It’s My Turn,” 410 “It’s Only Love,” 451 “It’s So Easy,” 384 “It’s Too Late,” 243 iTunes, 20, 36, 475 “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long,” 448 “I Want a Guy,” 402 “I Wasn’t Born to Follow,” 241 “I Will Always Love You,” 324, 326 “I Will Not Forget You,” 278 “I Will Remember You,” 276 Jackson, Janet, 135, 457–58 Jackson, Mahalia, 124 Jackson, Michael, 255, 410 Jacobs, Mark, 175 Jagged Little Pill (Morissette), 349 Jagger, Mick, 447 Jaimie Foxx Show, 63 Janis (Joplin), 214, 227, 228 Janis Joplin’s Greatest Hits (Joplin), 214, 215, 226, 227 Janis Joplin Slept Here (documentary), 230 “Jazzman,” 245 Jazz Passengers, 171, 173 “Jealousy,” 342 Jenkins, Milton, 400 Jesus Christ Superstar: A Resurrection (Indigo Girls), 209 J. Lo, 318 Joan (Baez), 29, 38 Joan Baez (Baez), 27 Joan Baez, Volume 2 (Baez), 28 Joan Baez in Concert (Baez), 28, 29 Joan Baez in Concert, Part 2 (Baez), 37 “Joan Baez Suite, Opus 144,” 41 John, Elton, 7 The Johnny Cash Show (television show), 79 “Johnny Feelgood,” 343 “Jolene,” 321–22 Jones, Mick, 183 Jones, Norah, 82 Joplin, Janis: career, 219–26; death, 226, 227, 229; drug use and, 219–21, 223, 225–26; early years, 216–19; fame after

Index Joplin, Janis (cont’d) death, 226–27; legacy, 229–30; mission, motivation, process, 227–29; overview, 213, 214–16; personal relationships, 216, 225, 226, 228 Joplin in Concert (Joplin), 214, 215, 226–27 Jordanaires, 76, 78 “Joshua,” 321 “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” 134–35 Jump to It (Franklin), 122, 134 “The Jungle Line,” 303 Juno Awards, 276 “Just Because I’m a Woman,” 330 Just Because I’m a Woman (album compilation), 328 Just Because I’m a Woman (Parton), 320 “Justify my Love,” 265 “Just Like This Train,” 302 Kabbalah, 270, 271 Kahlo, Frida, 266 Katrina, Hurricane, 98, 101, 158 Kaye, Lenny, 425, 431 Keller, Jack, 239 Kennerley, Paul, 150 Kent, Nick, 182 Kent State University, 182 Kerr, Jim, 187, 188 Kerry, John, 250 Keys, Alicia, 4 Kid Blue (Gofﬁn), 250–51 “Kid Fears,” 201, 203 Kimmel, Bob, 378, 379 King, B. B., 222, 443 King, Carole: awards and honors, 234, 250; career, 238–48; children, 237, 241, 250–51; early years, 236–38; legacy, 250–51; mission, motivation, process, 248–50; other interests, 250; overview, 233, 234–36; personal relationships, 234, 237, 238, 241, 246 King, Jo, 126 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 39, 124 Kings of Rhythm, 443 Kirshner, Don, 237, 238–39 Klein, Larry, 304, 306 Knopﬂer, Mark, 142, 154–55 Knowles, Beyoncé, 114–15 Knuckle Down (DiFranco), 86, 97 Kodak (Smith, P.), 425 Koite, Habib, 367 Kondor, Sherry Gofﬁn, 250, 251

493 KooKoo (Harry), 163, 169 Kortchmar, Danny, 241, 242 “Kozmic Blues,” 215, 226 Kral, Ivan, 425 Krauss, Alison, 154 Kucinich, Dennis, 100 Ladies of the Canyon (Mitchell), 295, 299 Lady of Soul awards, 115 Lady Sings the Blues (ﬁlm), 399, 406–7, 413 Lady Soul (Franklin), 130 Laird, Chelsea, 19 “La Isla Bonita,” 262 “Land,” 426 Landmine eradication, 157 “Land of Canaan,” 199, 201 Lang, k. d., 82, 247 Langdon, Jim, 220 Lanier, Allen, 425 Lanois, Daniel, 151, 286 Larkey, Charles, 241, 242, 244, 246 Larson, Nicolette, 394 “Last Dance,” 276 Last Date (Harris), 149 Last of the Independents (Pretenders), 188, 190 Laughing on the Outside (Franklin), 127 Lauper, Cyndi, 175 Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, 241, 380 Laurence, Lynda, 411–12 Lavigne, Avril, 181, 349 A League of Their Own (ﬁlm), 247, 250, 270 Learning to Crawl (Pretenders), 186 “Least Complicated,” 204 “Leavin’ On Your Mind,” 78, 80 Led Zepplin, 7 Lee, Brenda, 66, 81 Lee, Sara, 92 Leeds, Peter, 165, 168, 173, 174 “Left of Center,” 466, 471 “Legalise Me,” 189 The Legend of Jesse James (Kennerley), 150 Lennon, John, 295 Leonard, Patrick, 261 Lesbian artists, 197, 198 Let Go (Lavigne), 349 “Let’s Stay Together,” 450 “Letter from Tina,” 455 LGBTQQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, queer, and questioning), 210

494

Index “Lie to Me,” 189 LIFEbeat, 288 Lifetime Achievement Awards, 25 Life With My Sister Madonna (Ciccone), 269 Light of the Stable (Harris), 149 “Like a Prayer,” 263–64 Like a Prayer (Madonna), 255, 263 “Like a Virgin,” 256, 260–61 Like a Virgin (Madonna), 255, 256, 260–61 Lilith Fair: DiFranco and, 95; origins and impact of, 274; overview, 275; participants, 112, 188, 198, 204, 274, 461. See also Sarah McLachlan Linda Ronstadt: Stone Poneys and Friends, 379–80 Lindley, David, 394 Little, Margaret, 5 “Little Digger,” 344, 348 Little Earthquakes (Amos), 9–11, 12 Little Eva, 234, 239 Little Plastic Castle (DiFranco), 95 Little Sparrow (Parton), 327–28 Live 8, 289 Live Aid—Artists United Against Hunger, 39, 371 Live at Carnegie Hall: What You See is What You Get (Ike and Tina Turner Revue), 449 Live at Filmore West (Franklin), 132 Live at Stephen Talkhouse (Vega), 461, 466, 476 Live Earth, 371 Live From Knoxville (Ray), 209 Live From Los Angeles (long-form video), 47 Live in New York (Blondie), 172 “Live to Tell,” 261, 262 Living in Clip (DiFranco), 96 Living in the U.S.A. (Ronstadt), 384 The Living Room Tour (King, C.), 235, 247–48 Liz Phair (Phair), 336, 337, 344, 347–48 “The Loco-Motion,” 135, 239–40, 246 The Loco-Motion (Little Eva), 234 Loder, Kurt, 452 “Lolita,” 470 “Long, Long Time,” 381, 391–92 Longing in Their Hearts (Raitt), 354, 355, 366, 370 Loose Screw (Pretenders), 181, 189–90, 192

Lopez, Jennifer, 318 Lopez, Lisa “Left-Eye,” 115 “Lose Control,” 108, 116 “Lo Siento Mi Vida,” 392 “The Losing,” 189, 192 “Lost Woman Song,” 91 Love, Courtney, 181, 437 Love, Janis (musical), 230 Love All the Hurt Away (Franklin), 133 Love Explosion (Turner, T.), 450 “Love Is a Rose,” 383 “Love is Nothing,” 343 Love & Life (Blige), 57, 60–61 Love Makes the World (King, C.), 235, 247, 249 “Love’s Recovery,” 201 “Love Will Come To You,” 203 Luck of the Draw (Raitt), 354, 355, 364 “Lucky Star,” 256, 259 Ludacris, 114 “Luka,” 460, 462, 466–67 Luscious Jackson, 143, 175 Lush Life (Ronstadt), 376, 386 Luxury Liner (Harris), 147–48 Lynn, Loretta, 67, 79, 82, 83 Lyte, MC, 109 MAC Cosmetics and AIDS Fund, 62, 175 MAC Viva Glam VI, 175 Mad Love (Ronstadt), 384 Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (ﬁlm), 451 Madonna: awards and nominations, 256, 266, 267, 268; career, 259–68; children, 266, 267, 270; early years, 256–59; The Gap advertising campaigns, 115; Harry as inﬂuence on, 162, 176; as Harry competition, 171; legacy, 271; mission, motivation, process, 268–70; other interests, 270–71; overview, 253, 254–56; personality, 268–69; personal relationships, 258, 261, 263, 266 Madonna (Madonna), 255 Mahogany (ﬁlm), 408, 413 Maines, Natalie, 75 Make Some Noise, 475 Making Tracks: The Rise of Blondie (Harry and Stein), 168, 173 The Mamas and The Papas, 215 Mambo Kings (ﬁlm), 388 Mann, Aimee, 102 Mann, Barry, 235, 238, 323

Index Manson, Scot Shirley, 191 “Man Without a Dream,” 241 Mapplethorpe, Robert: death of, 431; exhibitions, 436; poems dedicated to, 432; Smith, P., relationship with, 421, 423, 424, 425, 430, 434–35 Marchand, Pierre, 278, 286–87, 288 Marks, Neil Alan, 29 “Marlene on the Wall,” 466 Marr, Johnny, 187 Martha and the Vandellas, 415 Martin, Barbara, 401, 403 Marvellettes, 415 Mary (Blige), 54–55 Mary Magdalene, 18 “Marys of the Sea,” 18 Mas Canciones (Ronstadt), 388 “Material Girl,” 261 Matrix, 344 347 Maverick, 271 “M by Madonna” (clothing line), 270 McCall, William, 70, 71, 72, 75 McCartney, Linda, 188 McCartney, Paul, 308 McCoy, Joltin’ Jim, 68–69 McGlown, Betty, 400–401 McGovern, George, 245, 250 McIntosh, Robbie, 186, 187 McLachlan, Sarah: awards and nominations, 276, 284; career, 279–86; children, 283; early years, 276–79; Lilith Fair, 95, 204; mission, motivation, process, 286–88; other interests, 288–89; overview, 273, 274–76; personal relationships, 280 McLaren, Malcolm, 183 McMillan, Terry, 54 “Me and a Gun,” 3, 10 “Me and Bobby McGee,” 214, 226, 227 Meet the Supremes (Supremes), 403 Megaphonic Records, 102 Meldrum, Michael, 88, 89 Melody Playboys, 68 “Mercedes Benz,” 215, 226 Merchant, Natalie, 462 A Merry Little Christmas (Ronstadt), 389 Mersey, Robert, 127 “Message of Love,” 185 Michael, George, 122, 123, 134 “Middle of the Road,” 186 Midler, Bette, 229

495 Migrant worker issues, 393 Miles of Aisles (Mitchell), 295, 302–3 “The Million You Never Made,” 93–94 Mills, Paul, 476 Mingus (Mitchell), 295, 304, 305 Mingus, Charles, 305 Minogue, Kylie, 135, 240 A Minor Incident (play), 250 Mirrorball (McLachlan), 276, 283 The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (Hill), 47 Misses (Mitchell), 307 Miss E . . . So Addictive (Elliott), 106, 107, 108, 113–14 “Missing You,” 411 Mitchell, Joni: awards and nominations, 294–95, 299, 307, 312; career, 298–308; children, 296; early years, 295–98; legacy, 311–12; mission, motivation, process, 308–10; other interests, 311; overview, 293, 294–95; personal relationships, 296–97, 299, 300, 301, 302, 304, 307 “MJB Da MVP,” 58 Monkees, 240 Monterey Pop Festival, 221 Morgan, Seth, 226 Morissette, Alanis, 337, 349 Morrison, Jim, 229 Mosley, Tim, 108–9, 110–11, 112, 113, 116–17 Motown Records, 125, 398, 401, 409 Mtukudzi, Oliver, 367 MTV (Music Television), 255 265 MTV Music Awards, 116, 117, 460 Mugwumps, 215 Muldaur, Maria, 383 Murphy’s Romance (ﬁlm), 250 “Muscles,” 410 MUSE (Musicians United for Safe Energy), 370, 371, 372 “Music,” 256 Music (King, C.), 234–35, 244 Music (Madonna), 255, 267 Music Box (Carey), 135 Music distribution, 20, 36 Music education charities, 63, 289 “My Baby,” 187 “My City Was Gone,” 186 My Life (Blige), 47, 52–53, 60 “Mystery Achievement,” 184–85 My Tennessee Mountain Home (Parton), 321

496

Index Naess, Arne, 411 Naess, Leona, 4 Nash, Graham, 246, 299, 300, 371 Nash Ramblers, 151 “Nashville,” 342 National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences Lifetime Achievement Award, 25 Native American issues, 209, 210 Natural Born Killers (ﬁlm), 428 Navarro, 246 Ndegéocello, MeShell, 100 Necessary Evil (Harry), 172, 174 Nelson, Willie, 152 Neo-soul, 46, 47 Nesmith, Michael, 379 NetAid, 63 Neuwirth, Bobby, 424 Neville, Aaron, 377 New Favorite (Krauss and Union Station), 154 New folk movement, 40 New Harvest, First Gathering (Parton), 316 Newport Folk Festival, 27 New Union Ramblers, 378 “New York is a Woman,” 472 New York Stories (ﬁlm series), 170 New York Undercover (ﬁlm), 62 “Nick of Time,” 363, 369 Nick of Time (Raitt), 354, 363, 369 Nicks, Stevie, 215 Nicolette (Larson), 394 “Night in My Veins,” 188 Night Ride Home (Mitchell), 306, 310 “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” 30, 31 9/11, 96, 99, 271, 328, 437 Nine Lives (Raitt), 362 Nine Objects of Desire (Vega), 460, 469, 474 “1959,” 432 “9 to 5,” 317, 324 9 to 5 (ﬁlm), 316, 324 9 to 5 (musical), 332 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs (Parton), 316 99.9 F (Vega), 460, 468–69 “No Cheap Thrill,” 470 No Doubt, 191 Noel (Baez), 29 No Exit (Blondie), 172 Nomads Indians Saints (Indigo Girls), 201–2

No More Drama (Blige), 55, 56–57, 60 No Nukes, 371 Not a Pretty Girl (DiFranco), 93–94 “Not Goin’ Cry,” 62 “Nothing Can Be Done,” 306 “Nothing Out There For Me,” 114–15 “Notice” (Smith, P.), 427 Not in Our Name, 100 “Not Today,” 47 “Now and Forever,” 247, 250 Now That Everything’s Been Said (The City), 241 “Nutbush City Limits,” 455 Nutbush City Limits (Ike and Tina Turner Revue), 449 Nyro, Laura, 240 O’Brien, Joel, 242 O Brother, Where Art Thou? (ﬁlm and soundtrack), 143, 153, 154 O’Connor, Sinead, 288, 462 Ogle, Judy, 331 “Oh! Carol,” 237 “Oh Father,” 257 “Oh! Neil,” 237 “Oh Suzanne,” 467 O’Keefe, Michael, 364 Once More Into the Bleach (Harry), 171 Once Upon a Christmas (Parton and Rogers), 317 “One,” 48, 61 “One Belief Away,” 366 One Day at a Time (Baez), 30 “One Fine Day,” 246 One in a Million (Aaliyah), 109 One Last Time in Concert (Turner, T.), 441 One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism (Franklin), 123, 135 “One Night Stand,” 215 “One of the Living,” 441, 451 “One Part Be My Lover,” 364 One to One (King, C.), 247 “One Way or Another,” 167 “Open Arms,” 457 “Open Your Heart,” 262 Orbison, Roy, 149 Orton, Beth, 4, 476 Otis, Clyde, 127 Out of Range (DiFranco), 98 “Out of the City and Down to the Seaside,” 297

Index Outta Season (Ike and Tina Turner Revue), 448 Packed! (Pretenders), 187–88 Paglia, Camille, 185 Paisley, Brad, 328 Palmer, David, 245 “Papa Don’t Preach,” 258, 262 Parallel Lines (Blondie), 166–67, 173 Parsons, Gram, 142, 145–46, 155, 156 Parton, Dolly: appearance, 316, 329, 333; awards and nominations, 150, 317, 322, 323, 328; career, 321–29; early years, 318–21; mission, motivation, process, 329–31; nicknames, 331; other interests, 331–33; overview, 315, 316–18; personal relationships, 320; Ronstadt and Harris collaborations, 325, 389; Ronstadt on, 392; website, 328 The Passionate Eye (Vega), 462–63, 466, 472–73 Pastorius, Jaco, 303 “Path of Thorns (Terms),” 284–85 Patrick Hernandez Revue, 258 Patsy Cline (Cline, P.), 67 Patsy Cline: Sweet Dreams Still (documentary), 83 The Patsy Cline Collection (Cline, P.), 82–83 Patsy Cline Museum, 83 Patsy Cline Showcase (Cline, P.), 67, 79 Patsy Cline Sings Songs of Love (Cline, P.), 67 The Patsy Cline Story (Cline, P.), 67, 80 Patti Smith Complete: Lyrics, Reﬂections & Notes for the Future (Smith, P.), 432 Patti Smith Group, 420, 427 Payne, Scherrie, 411–12 Peace and Noise (Smith, P.), 432 “Peace Train,” 317 Pearl (Joplin), 214, 215, 226 Pearl, Minnie, 73 Pearls (King, C.), 246 Peer, Clarence William “Bill,” 69–70, 71 Penn, Sean, 261, 263 People for the American Way, 393 “People Have the Power,” 430, 436 “Perfect World,” 206, 343 PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), 62, 158, 192 Phair, Liz: awards and nominations, 340; career, 339–46; children, 344; early

497 years, 338–39; legacy, 349–50; mission, motivation, process, 346–49; overview, 335, 336–38; personal relationships, 336 Phillips, Michelle, 215 Phillips, Utah, 86, 87, 100 “The Phone Call,” 183 Picasso, Pablo, 295, 309 “Piece of My Heart,” 222, 223, 226 Piece of My Heart (ﬁlm), 230 Pieces of the Sky (Harris), 142, 146–47, 156–57 Pink, 198, 206 Pirate Radio (Pretenders), 190 The Pirates of Penzance (musical), 385 “Piss Factory,” 423, 425 Pixies, 191 Plastic Letters (Blondie), 166 Play Me Backwards (Baez), 34, 35 “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” 240 Political campaign fundraising, 245, 250, 360, 436 “A Poor Man’s Rose (Or a Rich Man’s Gold),” 67, 74 Pop, Iggy, 175, 191 “Popstar,” 189 “The Porpoise Song, 240 Portraits (Harris), 152 “Possession,” 279, 287 Poverty and world hunger, 39, 63, 285, 288, 289, 371 “Power of Two,” 204 Powers, Ann, 7 “Precious,” 184 Presley, Elvis, 83 Pretenders, 180, 183–92 Pretenders (Pretenders), 184–85 The Pretenders: The Singles (Pretenders), 187 Pretenders II (Pretenders), 185 “Pretty Good Year,” 11 Pretty in Pink (ﬁlm), 466 Primettes, 400–402 Prince, 362 “Prince of Darkness,” 201, 203 Prisoner in Disguise (Ronstadt), 383 Prison Song (ﬁlm), 63 Private Dancer (Turner, T.), 441, 450–51 “Private Life,” 185 Privilege (ﬁlm), 429 “Privilege (Set Me Free),” 429 “Professional Widow,” 12–13

498

Index Prom (Ray), 208 “Proud Mary,” 440, 449 Puddle Dive (DiFranco), 93 Punk rock fashion, 176 “Pushing the Needle Too Far,” 202, 208 Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town (Harris), 148 Queen Latifah, 118 R. E. M., 200, 201, 437 Racial equity, 227, 228 “Radio Baghdad,” 433 Radio Ethiopia (Smith, P.), 427 Radio Music Awards, 115 “The Rain,” 106, 110 Rainbow (Parton), 316 RAINN (Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network), 3 “Raised on Robbery,” 302 Raising Malawi, 270 Raitt, Bonnie: awards and nominations, 354, 355, 364, 365, 367; career, 359–68; early years, 356–59; legacy, 372; mission, motivation, process, 368–70; other interests, 370–72; overview, 353, 354–55; personal relationships, 357, 364–65, 366 Raitt, John, 354, 356 Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN), 3 Rap the Vote, 63 “Rapture,” 169 Rapture Café, 175 Rarities, B-Sides and Other Stuff (McLachlan), 280–81 “Raspberry Jam,” 242 “Raspberry Swirl,” 3 Ray, Amy: early years, 198; on Indigo Girls popularity, 206; on process and motivations, 207; recording label of, 208; solo albums, 205, 208–9. See also Indigo Girls Ray, Oliver, 431 “Ray of Light,” 256 Ray of Light (Madonna), 255, 256, 266, 267 Ray of Light Foundation, 271 “Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hand),” 398, 407 Reading programs, 332 “Real Love,” 50, 51

Really Rosie (children’s television program), 236, 245 The Real Patsy Cline (long-form video), 67 Real World, 101 “The Reason,” 247 Recently (Baez), 34 Red Dirt Girl (Harris), 143, 152–53 Red Hot + Blue: A Tribute to Cole Porter (album compilation), 175 Red Hot Rhythm and Blues (Ross), 411 Reel to Reel (Grand Puba), 50–51 Reﬂections: A Retrospective (Blige), 58–59 Remembering Patsy Cline (tribute CD), 83 “The Rent Song” (Vega), 473 Reprieve (DiFranco), 98 “Respect,” 122, 129, 136–37 Respect M.E. (clothing line), 115 Respect M.E. (Elliott), 116 Retrospective: The Best of Suzanne Vega (Vega), 461, 471 Return of the Grievous Angel (Parsons), 155 “Reunite Missy and Timbaland” (website), 116–17 Reveling/Reckoning (DiFranco), 96–97, 99 Rhinestone (ﬁlm), 324 Rhymes and Reasons (King, C.), 235, 244 Rhythm and Blues Foundation, 370–71 Rice, Damien, 100 Richards, Keith, 134–35, 447 Richie, Lionel, 398, 410 Riddle, Nelson, 385–86, 389, 393 Righteous Babe Foundation, 101 Righteous Babe Records, 86, 90–92, 99, 101–2 Rimbaud, Arthur, 423, 424 Ring Them Bells (Baez), 35, 40 Riot grrrl, 437 Ritchie, Guy, 266 Rites of Passage (Indigo Girls), 203 “River,” 300 River. The Joni Letters (Hancock), 305 “River Deep, Mountain High,” 446, 447 River Deep, Mountain High (Turner, T.), 447 The Road to Stardom with Missy Elliott (reality program), 119 Robinson, Smokey, 399, 401, 402 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 190, 268, 312, 355, 367, 421 Rockbird (Harry), 170–71 “Rock Me,” 344 “Rock N Roll Nigger,” 428

Index “Rocks Off,” 340 Rock the Vote, 63 Rogers, Kenny, 317 Rolling Stones, 336, 340, 347, 447 “Romeo and Juliet,” 203 Ronstadt, Linda: awards and nominations, 150, 325, 377, 382, 383–84, 388, 389; career, 380–91; early years, 377–80; Harris and, 142, 146, 147, 377, 383, 392, 394; Harris and Parton collaborations, 325; legacy, 393–94; mission, motivation, process, 391–93; other interests, 393; overview, 375, 376–77; personal relationships, 377, 381, 391; self-esteem issues, 391 A Room of One’s Own (Woolf), 10 The Rose (ﬁlm), 229 Rose, Tim, 215 A Rose is Still a Rose (Franklin), 138 Roses in the Snow (Harris), 149 Ross, Diana: awards and nominations, 399; career, 402–12; children, 406, 411, 414; early years, 399–402; legacy, 414–15; mission, motivation, process, 412–14; overview, 397, 398–99; personal relationships, 405, 406, 409, 411 Rosse, Eric, 10 Rough (Turner, T.), 450 Round Midnight (Ronstadt), 386 RTC Management Corporation, 413–14 “Runaway,” 355, 361 Runnin’ Out of Fools (Franklin), 127 “Run to Him,” 239 Rush, Tom, 297 Ruth, Virginia, 400 Sacred Love (Sting), 48 Safe Haven for the Sexual Minority Youth Resource Center (beneﬁt album), 210 Sager, Carole Bayer, 247 Saliers, Emily: description of voice, 196; early years, 197–98, 206; on Indigo Girls partnership, 200; on process and motivation, 207; restaurants owned by, 209. See also Indigo Girls Sanborn, David, 250 Sandollar Productions, 332 Sanko, Anton, 467 Sarah McLachlan Music Outreach program, 289 Sarah McLachlan Remixed (McLachlan), 285 Sarah McLachlan Video Compilation, 285

499 Savoy, Ann, 390 Scarlet’s Walk (Amos), 14–15, 18 Schellenbach, Kate, 175, 208 Scholarship foundations, 139 Schommer, Dave, 247 Schoolhouse Rock, 245 Scott, Jill, 47 Scott, Mona, 106, 110 “Scream a.k.a. Itchin’,” 107 “Secret Place,” 306 Secrets of a Sparrow (Ross), 412–13 Secunda, Tony, 183 “Secure Yourself,” 200–201 Sedaka, Neil, 236–37, 239 “Self Evident,” 96, 98 Sentimentally Yours (Cline, P.), 67 September 11, 2001 attacks, 96, 99, 271, 328, 437, 475 Seventh Heaven (Smith, P.), 425 Sex (Madonna), 265 Sex Pistols, 183 Sexual assault issues, 210 Seymour, Adam, 188, 190 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Beatles), 7, 379 Shadowland (lang), 82 “Shame on You,” 205 Shaming of the Sun (Indigo Girls), 204–5 Shanahan, Tony, 431 “Shane,” 342 Shanghai Suprise (ﬁlm), 263, 270 Share My World (Blige), 53 “Shelter,” 279 Shelton, Robert, 27 Shepard, Sam, 424, 434 Shepard, Vonda, 470 “She’s a Bitch,” 112, 113 “She’s Got You,” 67, 79 “She’s Saving Me,” 205 Shine (Mitchell), 308 Shirelles, 239 The Show (ﬁlm), 62 Showcase with the Jordanaires (Cline, P.), 67 Shut Up and Sing (documentary), 75 Silberstein, Bob Ellis, 406 “Silent All These Years,” 10 Silk Electric, 410 Silk Purse (Ronstadt), 381, 391 Silver Lining (Raitt), 366–67, 367 Simon, Paul, 236 Simone, Nina, 63 Simple Dreams (Ronstadt), 384

500

Index Simple Things (King, C.), 246 Simply the Best (musical), 457 Simply the Best (Turner, T.), 441 Siouxsie Sioux, 437 Sista, 109 Six Ways to Sunday (ﬁlm), 171 Skaggs, Ricky, 148, 149 Sleater-Kinney, 437 Slick, Grace, 216 Slow Dancing With the Moon (Parton), 317, 326 “Small Blue Thing,” 466 Smith, Bessie, 228, 229, 240 Smith, Fred “Sonic,” 421, 426, 429–30, 431, 432 Smith, Larry David, 309–10 Smith, Patti: career, 424–33; children, 423, 430; early years, 422–24; legacy, 436–37; mission, motivation, process, 433–35; other interests, 435–36; overview, 419, 420–21; personality, 427, 433–34; personal relationships, 421, 423, 424, 425, 426, 429–30, 431, 432, 434–35; religion and, 434 Snakes and Ladders (Mitchell), 306 “Snow Queen,” 241 “Soap and Water,” 471 “Soap Star Joe,” 340 “Sock it 2 Me,” 111 So Damned Happy (Franklin), 139 “So Far Away,” 243 Sohl, Richard, 425, 430, 431 Solace (McLachlan), 275, 278, 286 “Solitude Standing,” 473 Solitude Standing (Vega), 460, 466 Somebody’s Miracle (Phair), 336, 337, 345–46, 348 “Someday We’ll Be Together,” 406 Some Journey (documentary), 471 “Something to Talk About,” 355, 365 “Somewhere Out There,” 386 So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter (DiFranco), 96 Song Bird: Rare Tracks and Forgotten Gems (Harris), 155 Songs in Red and Gray (Vega), 461, 470–71, 474 Songs in the Key of Life (Wonder), 346, 348 Songs of Faith (Franklin), 125 Songs of the West (Harris), 151 Songs to a Seagull (Mitchell), 297–98 Songwriter’s Exchange, 464, 470, 474, 475

Sonny and Cher, 215 Sood, Ashwin, 280 Soul 69 (Franklin), 131 The Soul of Ike and Tina Turner (Ike and Tina Turner Revue), 445 Souls Alike (Raitt), 367, 368 South Central Farm, 41 Southern Center for Human Rights, 101 Southern Light Production Company, 332 Soviet Kitsch (Spektor), 4 “So You Want to Be (A Rock ‘N’ Roll Star),” 429 “Spaceship Races,” 242 Sparkle (Franklin), 132 Speak for Yourself (Heap), 102 Speaking of Dreams (Baez), 34 Spector, Phil, 235, 446–47 Speeding Time (King, C.), 247 Speed-the-Plow (play), 263 Spektor, Regina, 4 Spirit in the Dark (Franklin), 131 Spirituality for Kids, 271 Springsteen, Bruce, 428 Spyboy (Harris), 152 Squeaky Wheel art center, 101 Stag (Ray), 205, 208 Stamps, commemorative, 67 “Stars and Planets,” 348 Staskausas, Jim, 336, 342 Stay Awake (album compilation), 472 “Steamy Windows,” 453 Steel Magnolias (ﬁlm), 324 Stefani, Gwen, 115, 176, 191 Stein, Chris, 162, 164–70, 172, 173–74 Steinem, Gloria, 330 Stern, Toni, 240, 241–42, 244 Stewart, Rod, 412 Stick It (ﬁlm), 116 Stilletos, 164 Stipe, Michael, 201, 432, 437 Stochansky, Andy, 92 “Stockings,” 470 Stone Poneys, 379–80 “Stop! In the Name of Love,” 404 “Stop Your Sobbing,” 183, 184 Straight Talk (ﬁlm), 324 Strange Fire (Indigo Girls), 196, 199–200 Strange Little Girls (Amos), 2, 14 Streetlights (Raitt), 361 Strickly Business (ﬁlm), 50 Stumble Into Grace (Harris), 143, 153–54 “Stupid Girl,” 191

Index “Subdivision,” 99 Sugar Beats (Gofﬁn Kondor), 251 “Summer of Cannibals,” 431 “Summertime,” 222 Sundiata, Sekou, 86, 90, 100 Supa Dupa Fly (Elliott), 106, 108, 110, 111 “Superhero,” 94 “Supernova,” 337, 342, 343 “Support System,” 342 Supremes, 398, 400–406, 411, 414, 415, 447 The Supremes A Go-Go (Supremes), 404 Surfacing (McLachlan), 276, 281 Suzanne Vega (Vega), 465–66 Suzanne Vega: Live at Montreaux (Vega), 471 “SVR Shufﬂe,” 355 Swamp Ophelia (Indigo Girls), 203–4, 207 “Sweet Baby James,” 242 Sweet Dreams (Cline, P.), 67 Sweet Dreams (ﬁlm), 83 Sweetface Fashion Company, 318 Sweet Forgiveness (Raitt), 355, 361 Sweet Passion (Franklin), 132 “Sweet Seasons,” 244 “Sweet Surrender,” 281, 282 “Sweet the Sting,” 16 Swept Away (Ross), 411 Swing, DeVante, 109 Switching in the Kitchen with Ree (Franklin), 139 “Table for One,” 346 “Take Good Care of My Baby,” 239 Take Me Higher (Ross), 411 Taking the Long Way (Dixie Chicks), 75 Takin’ My Time (Raitt), 361 Tales of a Librarian (Amos), 17, 20 “Talk of the Town,” 185, 191 Tame Yourself (Indigo Girls), 209 Taming of the Tiger (Mitchell), 307 Tapestry (King, C.), 234, 236, 242, 243–44 Tapestry: The Music of Carole King (review), 250 Tapestry Revisited (tribute album), 250 “Tax Free,” 304 Taylor, James, 234, 240, 241, 242, 246, 301 “Teach Me Again,” 457 “The Tea Leave Prophesy,” 310 Teaneck Tanzi: The Venus Flytrap (play), 170 Teatro (Harris and Nelson), 152

501 Teatro ZinZanni, 41 Tegan and Sara, 198 Temptations, 404, 405 The Tender, the Moving, the Swinging Aretha Franklin (Franklin), 127 10,000 Maniacs, 462 Terrell, Jean, 406 “That Lovin’ You Feelin’ Again,” 149 “That Sweet Old Roll (Hi-De-Ho),” 241 Thau, Marty, 165 “Thing Called Love,” 363 “The Things That You Do,” 109 “Think,” 133 Thirteen (Harris), 150 “32 Flavors,” 87, 94 This Girl’s In Love With You (Franklin), 131 This is Not a Test (Elliott), 107, 108, 115 Thompson, Gina, 109 Thoroughbred (King, C.), 235, 246 Those Were the Days (Parton), 316 “Thoughts” (Vega), 473 Threadgill, Kenneth, 219 “Thriller,” 255 Tibet, 435–36, 475 Tidal (Apple), 4 “The Tide is High” (Blondie), 168, 169 Timbaland, 108–9, 110–11, 112, 113, 116–17 Time Well Wasted (Paisley), 328 Tina: Live in Europe (Turner, T.), 441, 452 Tina Turner Child Abuse Center, 457 Tina Turns Country On (Turner, T.), 450 “Tiptoe,” 93 “Toast,” 16 “Today I Sing the Blues,” 126 Tommy (ﬁlm), 449 Tom’s Album (compilation), 467 “Tom’s Diner,” 460, 467, 476 Tori Amos Live Session (Amos), 20 To Venus and Back (Amos), 2, 3, 14 Touch (McLachlan), 275, 277 Touch Me (Ross), 408 “Touch Me Fall,” 204, 207 “Touch Me in the Morning,” 408 Touch the Sky (King, C.), 246 The Tour (Blige), 53 Tower of Song (album compilation), 472 Town and Country Jamboree (live entertainment program), 70, 73, 74 “Toyz,” 106 “Tracks of My Tears,” 383 Trail of Tears, 5

502

Index Trampin’ (Smith, P.), 432–33 A Tribute to Joni Mitchell (album compilation), 311–12 Tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughn (album compilation), 355 Tried and True: The Best of Suzanne Vega (Vega), 470–71 “Tried to Be True,” 201, 203 The Trinity Session (Cowboy Junkies), 82 Trio (Harris, Parton, and Ronstadt), 150, 316, 325, 386–87 Trio II (Harris, Parton and Ronstadt), 152, 325, 327, 389 True Blue (Madonna), 255, 261 True Colors Tour for the Human Rights Campaign, 175 The Truth About Cats and Dogs (ﬁlm), 472 Truth or Dare (documentary), 254, 264 “Try Me Again,” 392, 393 Tuesday’s Children (Saliers and Ray), 198 “Tumbling Dice,” 384 Turbulent Indigo (Mitchell), 295, 307 Turman, Glynn, 132 Turner, Ike, 440, 443–49, 450 Turner, Tina: awards and nominations, 440, 441, 449, 451; career, 444–54, 456–57; children, 444, 448; early years, 442–44, 457; legacy, 457–58; mission, motivation, process, 454–56; other interests, 457; overview, 439, 440–41; personal relationships, 444–45, 445–46, 447, 449, 450, 452, 457; suicide attempts, 448 “Turtle Blues,” 228 Tweet, 108 Twelve (Smith, P.), 433 1200 Curfews (Indigo Girls), 197, 204 Twenty Four Seven (Turner, T.), 441, 454, 456–57 “25th Floor,” 426 “Twisted,” 302 “Typical Male,” 451 U2, 48, 61 UB40, 187 “An Uncommon Love,” 247 Under Construction (Elliott), 106–7, 108, 114–15 Under the Pink (Amos), 11, 19 Unforgettable (Franklin), 127 Union City (ﬁlm), 170 Union Station, 154

“Until You Come Back to Me,” 132 “Untouchable Face,” 94 “Up on the Roof,” 234, 240, 242 “Upside Down,” 398, 410 Up Up Up Up Up (DiFranco), 87, 93 Urge Overkill, 339 Vandross, Luther, 134 Vee, Bobby, 239 Vega, Suzanne: awards and nominations, 460, 467; career, 465–72, 475–76; children, 461; current projects and inﬂuences, 475–76; early years, 461–65; inﬂuence of, 199; legacy, 476; mission, motivation, process, 472–75; other interests, 475; overview, 459, 460–61; personal relationships, 460, 461, 468, 470, 476; religious afﬁliations, 474 Velvet Apple, 332 Velvet Underground, 420 Veterans’ support issues, 157, 393 VH-1 Decades Rock Live (television special), 191 Videodrome (ﬁlm), 170 Videos, music, 255, 284 Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, 157 Vietnam War, 29, 30, 32, 39, 157, 393 Vigil: N.Y. Songs Since 9/11 (album compilation), 472, 475 “Village Ghetto Land,” 346 Visceglia, Mike, 467, 470 Viva El Amor (Pretenders), 188 Viva Glam lipstick (fundraiser), 62, 175 “Vogue,” 264, 270 Voices: Joni Mitchell (art exhibition), 311 Vote, Dammit! tour, 100 “Vote for Change” tour, 367, 372 Voting registration and awareness, 63, 100, 367, 372 Wagoner, Porter, 320–21, 322 Waiting to Exhale (ﬁlm), 62 Waiting to Exhale (McMillan), 54 “The Waitress,” 12 “Wake Up America,” 364 “Walkin’ After Midnight,” 67, 72, 73, 74, 82 “Walkin’ With My Angel,” 239 Wallace, Beulah “Sippie,” 358 Waller Creek Boys, 219 Ward, Clara, 124

Index Was, Don, 363, 365, 369 Waterman, Dick, 357–58 Watershed, 209 Wave (Smith, P.), 429 We All Love Ella (album compilation), 390 “We Don’t Need Another Hero,” 451 “Weekdays,” 245 Weil, Cynthia, 235, 238, 239, 323 Welcome Home (King, C., and Navarro), 246 “Welfare Symphony,” 245 Wells, Kitty, 66, 81 We Ran (Ronstadt), 389 “We Run This,” 116 West, Dottie, 66, 68, 80 West, Kanye, 62 Western Wall: The Tucson Sessions (Ronstadt and Harris), 152, 377, 389 Wexler, Jerry, 128–29, 131, 136, 137, 241 “What Good Can Drinkin’ Do,” 227, 228 “What’s Goin’ On,” 245 “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” 440, 441, 451, 455–56 What’s Love Got to Do With It (ﬁlm and soundtrack), 440, 441, 452, 453, 454, 456 What’s New (Ronstadt), 376, 385–86, 392 What’s the 411? (Blige), 46, 50–52 “What’s the Matter Here,” 462 What You Hear is What You Get (Ike and Tina Turner Revue), 440 “When I Get Where I’m Going,” 328 “When the Heartache Is Over,” 456 When the Pawn (Apple), 4 “When Will I Be Loved,” 382 When You Dream (Ross), 414 Where Are You Now My Son? (Baez), 39 “Where Did Our Love Go,” 403–4 Where Did Our Love Go? (Supremes), 404 “Where Has Everybody Gone?,” 187 “Where You Lead,” 251 “Whip-smart,” 347 Whip-smart (Phair), 337, 341–42, 347 White, Ted, 125, 127, 128, 130, 131 Whitechocolatespaceegg (Phair), 336, 342–43 White Cloud Council, 250 “White Hot Cum,” 344 White Shoes (Harris), 149 Who is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds Volume 1 (Scott), 47 Who’s That Girl (ﬁlm), 263

503 Who’s Zoomin’ Who? (Franklin), 122, 134 “Why Can’t I,” 337, 344 Why Do Fools Fall in Love (Ross), 410–11 “Why I Lie,” 348 “Widow’s Walk,” 471 Wilder, Chris, 46 Wildest Dreams (Turner, T.), 456 Wild Things Run Fast (Mitchell), 304 Williams, Dar, 40, 90 Williams, Paul, 400 “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?,” 234, 239, 243 Wilson, Mary, 398, 400, 402, 411 Wind in the Willows, 164 Winfrey, Oprah, 54, 56, 406 Winter Light (Ronstadt), 388 Wintersong (McLachlan), 285, 288 Wiseguy (television show), 170 Witherspoon, John, 19 With Everything I Feel In Me (Franklin), 132 Witt (Smith, P.), 425 The Wiz (ﬁlm), 409, 410, 413 Women’s issues: abortion rights, 91; concert tours supporting, 275; domestic abuse, 119, 440; empowerment, 440–41; networks, 3; religion and virgin/whore complex, 18 Wonder, Stevie, 346, 348 “Won’t Be Long,” 126 Wood, Brad, 339, 340 “Woodstock,” 299 Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (documentary), 224–25 Woolf, Virginia, 10 Woolgathering (Smith, P.), 431 Working Group for Children and Casa Alianza, 475 Workin’ Overtime (Ross), 411 “Work It,” 107, 114 “Work Me Lord,” 225 “World Falls,” 202 “World on Fire” (video), 276, 285, 289 World Vision (documentary), 288 “Worthy,” 93 Wrap Around Joy (King, C.), 235, 245 Wrecking Ball (Harris), 151–52 “Write It,” 430–31 Writer: Carole King (King, C.), 234, 242 “Writing After a Triumphant Fight” (Vega), 463

504

Index “The Wrong Direction Home,” 321 XM Radio, 36 Y Kant Tori Read (Amos), 8–9 You (Franklin), 132 “You and Me,” 131 You Can Dance (Madonna), 263 “You Can Do Anything,” 247 “You Got Me” (Badu and Scott), 47

“(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman,” 130, 241, 243, 251 Young, Neil, 142, 151, 296, 297 Young Gifted and Black (Franklin), 123 “You’re No Good,” 382 “You Turn Me On (I’m a Radio),” 301 “You’ve Got a Friend,” 234, 243 “You’ve Got to Show,” 205 “Zephyr and I,” 472

About the Author CARRIE HAVRANEK has written about music for The Village Voice, Salon, Paste, and Performing Songwriter, and is a contributor to Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Popular Musicians Since 1990 (New York: Schirmer Reference, 2004). She received an M.A. in journalism from New York University’s cultural reporting and criticism program, and teaches writing at Lafayette College in Easton, PA.

Women Icons of Popular Music 2 volumes : The Rebels, Rockers, and Renegades (Greenwood Icons)