Μια από τις πιο απίθανες ιστορίες της ποπ είναι η Vashti BunyanΣτα 60ς, προσπάθησε να κάνει ποπ καριέρα στο swinging London, αλλά δεν τα κατάφερε. Μετά την κυκλοφορία του δίσκου της Just Another Diamond Day, αυτή και ο σύντροφός της απόσύρθηκαν στην επαρχία με ένα κάρο(!) και κανείς δεν την άκουσε ξανά για 30 χρόνια. Όμως ο δίσκος ακολούθησε τη δική του πορεία, αναγνωρίστηκε και επηρέασε την νέο-folk γενιά (Denendra Banhart, κλπ) και τα 00ς είδαν την δηλή επιστροφή της στη δισκογραφία με διάφορες συνεργασίες και ένα δίσκο-συλλογή από τα 60ς "Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind" που κυκλοφορεί και στην Ελλάδα.
Η Vashti μας μίλησε για όλα αυτά στην συνέντευξη που ακολουθεί:
“Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind”. You were 19-20, that was your first single for Decca back in 1965 and it was a Jagger/Richards tune. And now it is the title of a retrospective of your pop music/days. What is this album to you?
VB. It is a way of telling my story – that I was a singer and a songwriter long before I recorded Just Another Diamond Day – and that I wasn’t a folksinger.
The songs on the album are from the swinging London 60s. How was it to be young and a musician in that era? What was the best and the worst thing in that era?
VB. The best thing was that it was so exciting to be there at the time when the music business was being taken from the middle-aged weary old guys who had run it and given new life by young people. The worst for me was that being a shy girl I wasn’t able to have much control over how I was represented. The journalists were still not really caught up with the times.
At the time of "Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind", you were promoted as the new “Marianne Faithful”, probably because your manager Andrew Loog Oldham had just “lost” Marianne Faithful and he was looking for someone like her to work with. How did this comparison affect you?
VB. That is what I mean about the journalists. Someone made that point – that Marianne Faithfull had left his management and therefore he must have been looking for a replacement and so that must be me – and the rest picked it up and ran with it. The fact that I was very different and wrote my own songs seemed to escape their notice – and forever I was promoted as her follower which in the end had me give up.
Did you have any expectations or second thoughts as to how people today would treat the “pop” side of your work, in view of the “folk” status that “Just Another Diamond Day” has gained?
VB. Yes of course – and still do have second thoughts. I am happy that Diamond Day made its way – but it did it without me! And now I am known for it and not much else. I just wanted to paint a clearer picture so that when people (like journalists) meet me they don’t look disappointed that I am not wearing a flowing dress with beads in my hair anymore.
“Just Another Diamond Day” is the story of a trip away from the city to find one’s inner truth. When it was released, at the end of the 60s, it didn’t find its audience. Instead, it has been appreciated in the last decade or so, from musicians raised in the time of internet and technology. Why do feel this has happened?
VB. Because of Internet and Technology! I have found that people now are so much more knowledgeable about the history of music – and even social history – and the internet is such a great resource for discovery. My children know more about music from the seventies for instance than I do. And remembering there was no promotion for Diamond Day back then, no live performances, there were very few pressed – and no one was looking for quiet music by the end of 1970 - how could anyone have known about it? And then I abandoned it completely. Also I think people are more able now to listen to other people’s inner truths..
Do you like the way “Diamond Day” sounds? I’ve read that Joe Boyd produced it without you actually being there a lot, so it is supposed to be “folkier” than you wanted? Is this true?
VB. We recorded JADD in three days and Joe then took the tapes to USA when he moved back there. I didn’t hear it again till he had mixed and mastered it months later. If I had been there I would have kept the Robert Kirby arrangements but not kept the folkier – more traditional - sounds on some of the tracks. When I eventually heard the finished album I was dismayed by its folkie hand-made feel. I refused to listen to it for years and years. I gave my copies away. Then in 2000 when we were remastering for the re-issue I heard it for the first time as Joe must have heard it and gradually I forgave everything.
Your trip with the carriage that lasted almost two years, to reach the Utopia that Donovan was to have in his island, is now some sort of a legend. What did it teach you and what would have made you stay in London?
VB. It taught me not to be afraid. It taught me that it is alright to have very little and that if you keep moving you find what you need. It taught me to respect people who lived their lives differently to me. I could not stay in London after my baby was born and my album came out. I had no way to make a living that would sustain us in the city. I had to go in search of a way to live and found it on the road.
You left the city for many years and then, some years ago, you returned to the city. So, where do you belong?
VB. Good question. My heart belongs on the road and yet here I sit at my big kitchen table with my laptop, surrounded by all the stuff I have collected in my life. I wrote a song when I was 20 called ‘Wishwanderer’ and it still works for me now.
You ask me where I live
Don’t you know I live here now
But where is my one real home
This minute with you now
Home is where I stayed last night
Tomorrow’s anywhere
If you let me stay with you tonight
Tomorrow’s home will be here
Home has been so many roads
That I walk down in my sleeping
Here with you I’m home at last
But it’s not home for my keeping
You won’t miss me when I’m gone
This isn’t my place
And my loves are few and don’t belong
To any one lover’s face
So don’t ask me where I’ll go
If you do I will lie to you
But I’ll tell you of the place that is never my home
Where I’ve lived all my life
Where I sing
A wishwanderer’s song
The trip from the city to “nature” could be read as an attempt to find some sanity in troubled times, like the late 60s with the Vietnam war, etc. Is the world today a different place than in was back in the days of “Just Another Diamond Day”?
VB. There are many parallels of course now, Vietnam with Iraq being the most obvious. What distresses me most is that the generation in control now should know better. I can’t blame it on the old and blind.. they are younger than me! I have said it before though that I believe the hopes and dreams of the sixties are more alive now than they were even then. I am hopeful.
So, after 30 years, from 2000 and on you return to the spotlight and you have done it with thunders. You have worked with the “crème de la crème” of the interesting independent artists of the new era, like Devendra, Animal Collective, Max Richter, Joanna Newsom, Piano Magic. How does all this seem to you?
VB. I have such admiration for them – as musicians and as courageous imaginative people. I rejoice in them. I am very lucky to have been able to work with them and come to know them a little.
I have read that Devendra wrote to you, asking whether he should keep doing what he was doing back in 2001 and this is how you met. And also, that he writes your name on this arm before some of his shows. Are these “rumors” true?
VB. Yes he wrote to me and sent some music and drawings which I loved immediately and wrote back to say he must carry on.. but he would have whatever I’d said or not said. He is a huge force. As to the writing my name on his arm.. he maybe did it once and the story grew – as they tend to.
Lookaftering, your former album, sounds quite “sad”. Since it was your first music in 3 decades, was this that your purpose or did it come naturally? How did it feel to find and hear your music “voice” after so long?
VB. It wasn’t till we were mastering that I realised how sad some of the songs were. I had loved being back in a studio and also the production with Max – I was so immersed in it all I didn’t think of it as a whole until the end. Finding my voice felt like coming home I guess, I realised how much I had missed it and what a big part of my life I had cut out for all the years. Maybe that was the sadness.
What is your advice to anybody out there, who has the music in him/her but can’t find his/her way?
VB. Don’t give up like I did. Never stop dreaming.
Since I believe in luck being a significant part in people’s lives, I have to ask: What is life to you? And do you think that we make it or does it go it’s own way, until we understand the way?
VB. I believe in dreams. I believe in making it in your head first. Maps are beautiful things. On the road it felt like whatever we needed we would find around the next corner if we just kept going. I told my kids that the most precious things they had in their lives were their dreams, but also that you have to let them teach you some things along the way.
You have offered your voice to the songs by Devendra, Piano Magic, Animal Collective. Are you more comfortable singing your songs or somebody else’s?
VB. Singing other people’s songs has been a revelation to me recently and I have learned a lot from it.
Since you have met and worked with some of the best musicians of the 60s and the 00s, I am tempted to ask for some words from you on them.
VB. Joe was different in that he looked after people and their lives as well as their music. It must have taken its toll on him – but I will always be grateful for his care as much as everything else.
Syd Barett
VB. I so WISH I’d known him. I don’t feel he was mad – I feel he was right.
Nick Drake
VB. We met a few times but he always silent and darkly distant. Joe tried to get us writing together. Not a success!
Donovan
VB. I loved the way he was when I knew him in 1968.. that he was the archetypal minstrel and would be playing and composing all the time. Never without his guitar in his arms.
Andrew Loog Oldham
VB. Visionary. It’s extraordinary to think that when I first met him he was barely 21. He was already so successful, kicking down the doors of the old guard of the music business and grabbing it for the young.
Max Richter
VB. The most perfect producer for me. Patient and understanding, responsive and kind – but above all a uniquely gifted musician.
Adem
VB. Again unique. Fun and thoughtful, I love his songs. Working with him is always full of laughs too but the music is taken very seriously.
Joanna Newsom
VB. Her musicianship floors me and her words amaze me. I love to see her play live – the way such a tiny person throws herself at that huge harp and MAKES it do what she wants. I love her to bits.
Kieran Hebden
VB. A well of musical ideas – and the kindest of people. I am so lucky to have met him and played with him.
Devendra Banhart
VB. Watching Devendra Banhart’s musical career – I can only beam with admiration and pleasure. He goes from strength to strength. I worry about him in a maternal kind of way – that he is too thin, too driven etc.. but that’s just silly. He is magnificent.
Piano Magic
VB. Glen Johnson was the first person to invite me back into the studio – to record a song of his. I was so nervous but he put me at ease – and I was soon swept up in the music they made. He is a wonderful songwriter – and their instrumentation is gorgeous and spare and huge.
Animal Collective
VB. More unique than ever – they never play live anything that they have recorded, only what they are at present working on. More alive than anyone I know, heads and shoulders above any imitators.
What are your future plans?
VB. I am writing some new songs. Hopefully there will be another album next year. If it feels that they’re good enough.
Thank you very much for your time.
OK – pleasure! Vashti
interview done 19/12/2007
No comments:
Post a Comment