by: Chris Willman (from the EW web site)
Sarah McLachlan and four of her Lilith co-stars sat down with EW to discuss the festival, their songs, and the various ways that their images are distorted by the media. Here's the dish that didn't make it into the final magazine article.
I can tell you, my love for you will still be strong/After the boys of summer have gone...
That, last summer, went a long way in describing just how strongly the public took to Lilith Fair, the no-frontguys-allowed festival that trumped the big boys. Lollapalooza, the alt-rock jamboree that started this whole multi-act tour craze, sputtered out amid negative attention about a couple of years' worth of unduly all-testosterone bills. H.O.R.D.E. also hit some bad times. But in that soft-ish season, Lilith, brainchild of Canadian thrush Sarah McLachlan, won critical applause and earned an impressive $16.5 million gross with a relatively small number of dates.
The '98 model Fair will touch down in a far more significant number of cities -- 57, beginning June 19 in Portland, Ore.-- and with an even more diverse lineup, encompassing the likes of Erykah Badu and Bonnie Raitt, the Indigo Girls and K's Choice, Queen Latifah and Emmylou Harris. This was occasion enough for EW to do its own second annual in a series: a roundtable with some of the ladies who Lilith. Joining McLachlan for our pre-tour chat were alt-rock pioneer Liz Phair, hip-hop queen Missy "Misdemeanor Elliott, recent Grammy-gal Paula Cole, and the festival's closest thing to a co-headliner, Natalie Merchant. Here, as an exclusive online bonus for EW readers, is what the girls of summer had to say.
EW: Is your "image" a cross you have to bear, or is it a more positive thing?
COLE: I didn't want to be on my first record cover. It was a fragile time in my life. I cut my hair really short. I was androgynous. I didn't want to be sexualized -- I wanted it to be about the music. And I had a very aristocratic label head who wouldn't let me not be on the cover. He'd always pick a sexy picture, and I was choosing artistic pictures. That album was a lot of pain. The second album (This Fire) was about me standing on my own two feet, producing it myself, and coming to a place in life of letting my hair grow, realizing "F--- you, I feel beautiful inside! I know there's always gonna be some construction worker checking out my a-- and making lewd comments, but it doesn't have to affect me anymore. I can choose to be the beautiful woman that I am. For so long I didn't believe that, and I felt victimized by the psychic bombardment of men. I decided I wasn't gonna be that victim anymore, I was gonna be proud. So that album cover is symbolic of that discovery. I chose to be naked because it was like a rebirth. And it was an artistic nude picture; it wasn't a sexualized nude picture. I did it in the backyard in Brooklyn with my friend Jodie.
MERCHANT: Just think, when you put a record out, you have no control of how people interpret the content of your lyrics. You have no control of how people are going to interpret the visual aspect of your presentation, either. When I was in 10,000 Maniacs, we never put our picture on the cover. I always designed our covers and I always made montages and found art. I had this idea that it was much more important that people just listen to the music. They don't have to know who we are. We could be totally anonymous.
PHAIR: I don't know about you guys, but I don't usually think it through the way the company does -- I don't think about the impact it will have on an audience. Honestly, any nudity that I've done, or any sexualized image, has been about how I felt at the moment.
MERCHANT: And the scary thing is that in the age that we live, what we do will be around in the world longer, too. It's almost like I'm afraid to think in the terms of the longevity of any project that I do, like, if you're sitting in the studio and think, Oops, that note might not be perfect, and 20 years after I'm dead, someone might buy this record and hear it...
PHAIR: In 500 years, they won't even have any of this material; it'll be degraded; it'll be over. That's the one good thing... But don't you guys find that, whatever you're doing, musically or in photographs or what you say in an interview, has so much to do with what you're going through at the time.
MCLACHLAN: It is a momentary thing. And, of course, the raciest thing that comes out of your mouth or the raciest look you give a photographer is what's going to get printed because it makes for sexy copy.
COLE: I look forward to getting older. I look forward to being comfortable with my age. I find it disturbing that so many notable women get plastic surgery. I think Bonnie Raitt's a perfect example of someone who's comfortable with her age and looks beautiful with the wrinkles that show how she has lived.
MERCHANT: Or Emmylou Harris' hair.
MCLACHLAN: You're absolutely right about being comfortable with yourself, your own image, because there is so much bombardment of other people's perceptions of you in the job that we have. We're constantly being told what other people think we are, and that's why it is so important to know yourself.
MERCHANT: A lot of those assumptions can be drawn from a record you made 17 years ago, that have nothing to do with who you are. What have any of us done 17 years ago that has anything to do with who we are today?
MCLACHLAN: Yeah, and who doesn't change their mind daily, on small things and big things?
MERCHANT: Would anybody like their journals published? I made my first record 17 years ago. I wrote those poems when I was 16, and I turned them into songs. And I feel like journalists today are still interpreting this 16-year-old girl who didn't want to leave her room.
PHAIR: It's like they let you into the pop culture, and they say, "Okay, you're this." I was like the good girl/bad girl, and here's your slot. And if I wasn't gonna play that slot, there was no room for me. That's what they had room for, and they still just have room for this slot. Are you gonna step up to the bat and be that kind of thing? Like with Julia Roberts -- "Oh, she made a nice romantic movie with long hair again." "Goooood!" And that's so frustrating.
MERCHANT: Do you feel like your audience is much more willing to grow with you than the press is? Do you feel like your audience is much more willing to grow with you than the press is? [turning to interviewer] Sorry, Chris! [laughter]
PHAIR: Yes, I do! I feel like the people who buy our music and like what we do are changing and growing themselves. They're not the problem. It's the go-betweens, and the people who are part of the industry who are afraid that "the slightest push off to the right or the left and we lose this market."
EW: Liz, as you say, you did get put in that "bad girl" slot. But painting you as that provocative persona was at least partially based in the reality of your lyrics. With this new album, it may be as provocative emotionally, but has fewer of those catchphrases people latch onto.
PHAIR: It's not graphic.
EW: Exactly. Do you think that's gonna hurt you, that you don't fit as overtly into the conception of you as this shocking singer.
PHAIR: I think it's gonna help me, because it's authentic. I don't feel like an angry 25-year-old who is trying to break out of some kind of repression I felt at the time. So I think authentic music only helps you. And I think any time you try to recapture something that is not really true to your life anymore, it comes across as contrived. Your only choice is to grow with yourself and your music. So I actually have a lot of faith in coming across the way I do on the album. Because, to me, when I play that record, I feel very close to it and very in touch with that person.
MERCHANT: Well, people are searching for that in the culture, I think, because there is so much artifice. I think people are looking for something authentic; they're looking for something honest and something real. A lot of people may degrade what we do and say, "You're just a pop artist." But what other kind of art are a lot of 14-year-old girls being exposed to? Are they reading the classic poetry? No. Are they going to see the classic plays? Are they reading the classic novels? No, they're listening to our records. I like to think that there's something in what I'm doing that describes now and this time and my experience in this place and touches a human part of someone else. And when you say authenticity, that's what I'm assuming you're discussing.
PHAIR: What I as a record buyer look for, that's what I give, too.
MERCHANT: That's why when I hear Billie Holiday sing Strange Fruit, it is one of the most real expressions of the time. It's not like [sings] "We're in the money...!" No. That song was banned from the radio because it was so honest and so truthful. And just the way she sings it, it's like, she knew.
MCLACHLAN: The same with Gloomy Sunday. That was banned as well. Housewives were going out and killing themselves after hearing it -- or that was the fear, anyway, because it was so real and so depressing.
EW: Sarah, you're not someone who's associated with having a lot of satire or irony in your songs, so everything can then tend to be taken at face value, even though in life you might be a tougher person than you choose to be in that particular song.
MCLACHLAN: Oh, yeah, I've fought an image long and hard of me being the ethereal waif who rides off in the sunset on a white horse. For Sweet Surrender we got treatments of people wanting to have long, flowing garb and riding off into the woods. It's like, When can we move on from this stereotype that I've kind of been cast in? [to Phair] It's like you and your bad girl thing you got typecast in that role, and I got typecast as the sort of demure waif. Which I guess the music helped to perpetuate. And I was real young -- I was 19 when I got signed -- and very naive and shy about photo shoots, and I never looked at the camera. I always looked away.
MERCHANT: I always thought it was beautiful, and I always responded to it, because I would think, She doesn't want to give her soul away to that photographer. I respect that. Michael Stipe never looked at the camera for years, and I always thought that was really cool. I think when you come out and try to counter an image, it's a big, wasted effort. Just go on and make your music, but to come out and have to be like, "That's not who I am, you're all wrong, this is who I am!" you probably aren't gonna be that person in a couple years anyway.
MCLACHLAN: Oh exactly. It is a complete waste of time. But it was frustrating, because I felt like that wasn't me. But then I went, well, maybe it's a good thing, because I don't really want them to know who I am, anyway, so let's just leave it alone. But it became humorous after a while. Because no matter what kind of image I did put out there... Just depending on the day, I'd feel brash and in a good mood and be looking at the camera and smiling, and they're like "What are you smiling so much for?" I'm going, "Would you like me to be depressed? Does my smile ruin your image of me?" It's like hey, I'm a happy person! Everyone was always shocked when I came in smiling because they expected me to be a sort of dour, depressed witch or something.
PHAIR: Was it dour, or was it like more fragile, more like pure?
MCLACHLAN: Yeah, fragile. And then I burped, and everything went to s---. [Laughter] But yeah, you're right, it gets back to the basic thing of having to figure out who you are in all of this. And when you find it, whatever it is, however mercurial it is, you have to be ruthless for it, for yourself. It seems to me that's the only way to survive in this world.
MERCHANT: I think an interesting thing is separating what musicians do from who musicians are. I use first-person perspective constantly as a literary device. These songs are not all about me, me, me. I wrote this song Wonder: "Doctors have come from distant cities to see me..." Right from the beginning, I would think you'd have to be an idiot to think that this song was about me. But then critics would write, "She must have the biggest ego on the planet..."
PHAIR: Really? I knew better, but I didn't even stop myself. I went right along with it. I want to think it's you! [laughter]
MERCHANT: I shouldn't have spoiled it for you!
PHAIR: Well, I knew it wasn't you. But I mean, don't you ever find yourself falling into the same traps...
MERCHANT: Well, Joni Mitchell -- I want to think that she led the most exciting life imaginable, that every one of those songs is about her. But they can't all be. Some of them have got to be about people she read about in the paper or a conversation she overheard on the plane or the bus...
MCLACHLAN: Or all of the above. I generally write first-person as well, and in one song, I'll have taken from four or five different stories, as well as my own experiences.
PHAIR: I was a man twice on this album.
MCLACHLAN: Yeah, I was one last time.
MERCHANT: Definitely, all the time. I was a factory worker who worked at a table factory for 40 years once. I was writing about my uncle... In My Beloved Wife I was singing with the voice of a man who had spent 50 years married to this woman who passed away. I was speaking for my grandfather, and my neighbor, several friends who've lost their wives... And I've gotten letters from men who have raved and said "That song expresses what I feel for my wife, and how could you know?"
EW: But unless you're Randy Newman and obviously being satirical with your characters, people by and large do tend to assume that it's an expression of you, even when you do interviews and say it's not.
PHAIR: Because they need to, and they want to, identify. They need to believe that you really did feel that, because if they feel it in a song, and it hits them, they're like, "God, you understood." They need you to be there...
MCLACHLAN: ...and you've cheated them somehow if it's not your true experience.
EW: Missy, I know Salt N Pepa were role models for you. But I get the perception that they're not as successful now because people in the rap hardcore feel they're too soft all of a sudden. Did you always feel like you knew exactly what persona you wanted to put forth in the songs?
ELLIOTT: I mean, I always wrote realist. In the hip-hop world, we don't get this deep! We just write street. Like, if a girl and a guy are out arguing, or a girl is cheating on her man, or her man is cheating on a girl, that's the way we write.... In the hip-hop world, we're just straightforward. Like, "Okay, he was playin' on me, and I'm coming to your house, we're gonna fight!" [laughter]
COLE: What about KRS-1? I mean, there are examples. He's deep..
ELLIOTT: He's a deep rapper. He's really into his culture. But if you listen to a lot of the songs, they're really straight to the point.
MERCHANT: Almost like sermons.
ELLIOTT: If you sit down and listen to 'em, you don't even have to think of what they're saying. And I mean, to me, that's not always good. But in the hip-hop world, we just write like that for some reason. And I always knew what type of songs I wanted to write and whatever. Now I'm writing songs for Spice Girls and doing songs with Paula Cole, so I feel like I'm on the other side now, and to me that's good. Because one thing about me is, I would never want to just be in the hip-hop world. I want to be universal and just get a taste of both sides of the world.
I always knew what I wanted from the time that I started, and I believe that's why I'm right here. I'm young, I got cars, houses, I got a lot of money in the bank... and a lot of hip-hop artists are not like that, because we've got this mentality that the first thing we do when we get our money, we go buy expensive clothes. We don't care about a house, we got to have the car... It might not be that important to y'all, "Oh, I gotta go run to the Versace store, and I gotta get the diamonds laced out," but that's how it is in the hip-hop world -- we're very materialistic. And fortunately with the upbringing that I had, I knew that I wanted to be business-minded. You can make good music all day long, but if you don't have the business side of it, it doesn't make a difference. Your music can be playing on the radio and you can be broke. So that's the biggest importance to me is, my business side first, and then the music. Because I've got the love for the music, but I'm also in it to collect the check. I think if we had to just make music and wasn't getting any money off of it, it wouldn't be a big deal. You make music because you love it and you make music to make money.
MERCHANT: Where do you think that intense outward show of materialism comes from? Is it because of deprivation?... I just think it's so ironic that the whole grunge scene was all these suburban kids that had all the material comforts all their lives, and suddenly they were in ripped clothes and totally shying away from any show of materialism. And a lot of kids who grew up in the ghetto and had nothing, suddenly it was like big diamonds and the chains and clothes and Mercedes...
ELLIOTT: But that's the thing, in the hip-hop world, a lot of the black people don't have that, so when they get that little bit of money, they've never experienced driving a Benz, so that's the first thing that they try to do. They don't think, Let me go invest in this, or, Let me get some mutual funds here. They think, They see me on TV, so I want people to see me with the diamond necklace.... [Everyone laughs because Elliott is wearing an enormous diamond necklace.] I know I got all of that, but at the same time, I have my investments and I have my mutual funds and I'm not just blowing it.
COLE: I want to say it's real inspiring, Missy, that you're taking charge of your business career that way. And I think it's gonna inspire a lot of young girls. I think it's really, really wonderful. Especially in the hip-hop world, things rotate so quickly, and so many artists can't get a second chance. It's refreshing to see Gang Starr with a new album and Public Enemy having a new album; it's refreshing to see those old faces come back, because the turnover is so fast.
ELLIOTT: That's like me and Li'l Kim -- we're real close -- and one day we just sat on the phone for hours and hours; I said, "You need to get your own label, you need to put this person out." So now Kim has a joint venture with Atlantic, which is a good thing. So it'll start rotating around. And people like Mary J. Blige, I believe she's shopping her own label now, so it's starting to get around like that.
PHAIR: Can I ask you a question? What does that mean, to get your own label? Is that something that I should do?... Do you have to go find artists?
ELLIOTT: Yeah, you get your artists. Like with me, I have my own label and I have an artist who's our right now who's doing really, really well, and Elektra, they basically distribute her records, get 'em to the different radio stations and make sure that they get played and all of that.
MERCHANT: But you provide all the initial capital for the making of the record.
ELLIOTT: Yeah. I did her whole album just like I did my whole album, and I just give it to 'em and it's done. The fortunate thing about Elektra is they had a lot of faith in me, because a lot of labels wouldn't. You can't just walk in a label and be like, "I want my own label because I'm Missy Elliott." They have to at least know that you can deliver... because a lot of people who have different production companies may have signed like 15 artists and never put any of them out.
EW: Obviously a lot of performers have really gotten behind this year's Lilith Fair. But the occasional people who have come out against it in print -- Ani DiFranco and Courtney Love and Tori Amos -- does that bother you when those women who are holdouts come out and say this is a bad idea?
MCLACHLAN: Well, I don't know if they're so much saying it's a bad idea... Now, I haven't read any of the stories, so I don't know what anybody has been saying, actually. Can you tell me exactly what they're saying? Do you have quotes?
EW: Tori said something to the effect that she can't live without testosterone around.
MCLACHLAN: Me neither! [laughs]
EW: And Ani and Courtney, I think, were just saying that it perpetuates even more Women in Rock stories when the novelty of that was just starting to wear off in the media.
MCLACHLAN: Oh, I agree, I'm tired of Women in Rock stories, too. I mean, I don't know why can't people say, "It's a festival of great music, and they all happen to be women who are making it.
EW: Liz, people might've expected you to be coming from the same sort of place as Courtney and Tori and Ani, since you might tend to get lumped in with them and the somewhat more confrontational music they represent, at least more confrontational than what the stereotype of Lilith is. Obviously you haven't sided with that attitude after all.
PHAIR: Not at all. I hate my job because it's always surrounding me with men, and I never feel like I have peers... And it is the best thing in the world -- I don't even care what it stands for. I just am so excited to be around other women who do what I do. I mean, I feel completely normal talking to these women, even though I can see by what they say that they have very different perspectives. I think if Courtney Love or Ani DiFranco or Tori Amos was sitting on this couch, I would feel the same way. And if they choose not to be a part of it, that's absolutely fine. I understand that. But to me, it's like a blessed event.