by: Natalie Merchant

In her songs, Natalie Merchant of 10,000 Maniacs addresses issues such as homelessness, child abuse, the plight of American indians and US involvement in Vietnam. With the group's album of early recordings, Hope Chest, on release, she writes for Select about her social conscience and how it manifests itself in the Maniacs' material

"As a songwriter, I can't be glib about what's going on around me. There are so many things that are unsatisfactory about the world I live in and the culture I've been brought up in, that it would be impossible to remain silent and pretend ignorance. I can't live that way.

"When I was growing up I idolised a strange group of musicians - whatever my mother had in her record collection. I wanted to be Petula Clark, yet at the same time I wanted to be Mary Travers of Peter, Paul And Mary.

"It's great when I hear six-year-old children saying, I love your music, who's Jack Cadillac? - and I have to explain who Jack Kerouac is. They are obviously singing along and misunderstanding the words like I used to.

"I was passionate about Peter, Paul And Mary. I didn't realise at the time that they were doing watered-down versions of Dylan songs, but I was getting the lyrics of Dylan songs through Mary Travers. In fact, I'd already made two records before I really heard a Bob Dylan record.

"I think of my writing as continuing the tradition of Dylan and other folk writers - a song like Eat For Two is based on a song type that's hundreds of years old - songs about current social issues.

"Listen to all the British folk songs about women who fell from grace and became pregnant at the wrong time by the wrong person and were ostracised and humiliated, and the lengths women would go to to deceive people about their pregnancy. Women who would go into the forest and give birth to their children and then kill them.

"Those old songs were about real life issues, and I hope mine are too.

"I get pretty passionate responses from people if they're touched by the music. I had a young woman who mailed me her father's Purple Heart medal after she heard The Big Parade.

"I was once doing a live radio interview in San Francisco and a man called in and said he'd been riding home from work on the freeway and What's The Matter Here came on the radio. It was the first time he'd heard us, or it, and he said the lyrics struck him because he'd been abused by his alcoholic father when he was growing up. He'd repressed it for years and never cried about it as an adult, and when he heard the song he started crying so much that he had to pull the car over.

"If just one person has a response like that, it makes it worthwhile.

"Many of my friends are children's rights advocates. One of them took me to the underside of Washington DC, the part that tourists don't see.

"We went to a neo-natal intensive care unit where drug-addicted premature children are kept in incubators until they're well enough to be put in nurseries and their fate is decided by the parents and social welfare workers - and it was like descending into the lowest level of Hell.

"Right now there are 9,000 cocaine and crack-addicted children in America and the number's growing every month. Crack cuts off the oxygen to the child within the womb and causes brain damage, hyperactivity and lack of attention span. It's pretty drastic.

"After that I did a Public Service Announcement on homelessness and children for Michael Stipe's film company, C-00 Films. He's done 13 PSAs now.

"As director of the film I wanted the children to be comfortable with me, so my friend Abigail and I began going to homeless shelters in Harlem, the Tier 2 programme they call it. After three weeks they were ready for the camera - ravenous for it!

"The day after the filming, two of the women working on the programme had deaths in their families and couldn't come to work. They were desperate, so I stood in for several days. I hope I can keep doing that.

"We did a benefit concert and raised $25,000 for them. It was good to do an unsolicited benefit, because we get about ten requests for benefits a week.

"When I was a teenager, Roxy Music were the be-all and end-all to me, which is pretty strange living in a rural town in western New York.

"I would go to the local mall, which was the only place that had a record shop, and in the close-out bins I would find Brian Eno solo albums and Roxy albums that you could buy on eight-track. I'd save up my allowance and babysitting money and buy Here Come The Warm Jets and Before And After Science. My family got so tired of listening to them, they bought me headphones.

"Sometimes in 10,000 Maniacs we will rock and roll for about 15 seconds, but then I get bored with it. We did the Free song All Right Now the other night.

"But generally I don't listen to music with insipid lyrics, apart from R&B. If I could sing like Aretha Franklin, I wouldn't have to worry about my lyrics.

"I would love to do an album singing in another language, or singing backwards, so that people would be affected by the melody and the music alone.

"When I got to Britain on our recent trip I was terribly jetlagged, but I wouldn't sleep. So I took the train to St Paul's Cathedral at seven o'clock on a Sunday morning - and the organist was rehearsing. That piece of architecture was built for that organ to sound that way, and I was thinking, This elevates my existence. That's the power of music.

"When I sang Hateful Hate - about the invasion of Africa by white imperialists - I was in this church screaming about things that started to happen 400 years ago, and it's still happening now. To get that upset and that furious over something is pretty powerful.

"But we show another side of the same coin on a song like Trouble Me, which is a very tender song about being generous with your time and compassion for other people.

"I went to a party the other night and ended up sitting in the corner with four other people taking about crack babies, when we should have been having a party conversation.

"I don't know if I could write a song about something like that. There are certain issues that are beyond discussion in a three-minute song.

"But when I hear that a native American is using our song Among The Americans on his programme, or that people are using Cherry Tree in their literature classes, or What's The Matter Here? in their training courses for spotting abuse of children, or using Poison In The Well in a documentary about toxic waste in drinking water, it makes me feel like I'm serving the public. I'm providing a piece of work that can complement their work.