by: Siobhan Long (page 21)
When you've been variously described as the Sylvia Plath of the music industry and the diva responsible for splintering 10,000 Maniacs, chances are you either: a) develop a thick skin and carry on regardless or: b) murmur "ochone ochone", lie back and ponder what might have been.
Natalie Merchant is unlikely to favour the latter option, being the kind of person who thrives on change and perishes on stagnation. And with the world-wide success of her debut solo album, Tigerlily, three years ago (it sold over three million copies, far and away outstripping any single 10K Maniacs album) her tenacity has more than reaped dividends. And, needless to say, such commercial success yielded a far stronger bargaining hand when it came to the making of her second solo album, Ophelia.
As a result, she's riding the crest of a wave as she resurfaces in Dublin to renew her acquaintance with her Irish audience. Critically lauded and finding its way into a substantial number of record collections, Ophelia presents an older, wiser Natalie with an appetite for lush arrangements and vaporous melodies.
After Tigerlily's bareboned skeleton, Ophelia comes over like a thespian that's been in make up for quite a while. Eschewing the traditional house band in favour of a succession of notable guest appearances (Daniel Lanois, N'Dea Davenport of the Brand New Heavies, Gavin Bryars, Tibetan devotional singer Yungchen Lihamo, to name but a few), Merchant, circa 1998, is a far more multi-layered proposition than her earlier incarnations ever hinted at. And as the co-headliner (with Sarah MacLachlan) of the Lilith Fair US tour. there's little doubt but that Ms. Merchant knows what she's doing.
Comfortably ensconced in a city centre hotel, buffeted from the joys of an Irish November, Natalie Merchant cuts an impressive figure as she fields questions and requests from her tour manager, record company person and Dublin PR agent. With her coal-black hair, and almond skin, she bears an uncanny resemblance (and how she'd hate this) to ... Snow White. But her grey and black garb hints that she's probably closer to DKNY than to Disney.
"Tigerlily was a record that I made in a real rush", she says, in an almost confessional tone, "but what I just love about being solo is that you can pick and choose who you want to play with. And I feel the current tour band is probably the best I've ever had."
With the summer US Lilith Fair tour barely over, Merchant's only now getting a chance to really flex her solo performer muscles in earnest. Does she feel vulnerable without the comfort of the all-female tour entourage around her?
She shakes her head emphatically.
"I think the main gift that I received from being involved in Lilith Fair", she offers, "was this sense of community, because I think sadly, a lot musicians feel isolated. The recording studio is very isolating and touring can be very isolating too, even though you're travelling and meeting hundreds of people. At the and of the day you only have your tiny core of people that you're travelling with. With Lilith Fair, it was wonderful to be among people who do the same work that you do, and talk about their experiences in the business or their creative process, or just talk about what it's like to have children and to be on the road."
Is an all-female milieu something that Natalie would consciously seek out, or was her involvement in Lilith Fair simply a response to an invitation from Sarah MacLachlan?
"Well, definitely when I left 10,000 Maniacs, after 12 years of being the only female in a group of six musicians, I wanted to work with women", Merchant admits. "It was definitely one of my goals. For Tigerlily, my lead guitarist was a woman, and I hired an all female crew, except for two people, for the tour of that album. I had a rigger, a light designer, two women playing on stage. I felt that finally there was a balance in my life and I think I'll continue to try to do that, whenever possible."
Female crew is harder to come by, though.
"You know, it's strange", she remarks, "because in this day and age when there are female astronauts, and brain surgeons and thousands of PhD's, it's still so rare to find women who can tune guitars. And the great thing about Lilith Fair was that it broke into some new occupations where I had never seen women before."
The absence of women in the higher echelons of the music business causes Merchant some ire too.
"There are only 2 CEO's of record companies who are female, to my knowledge", she says. "That's Elektra and Wyndham Hill. There may be some in indie labels but not in the bigger labels. But in the 14 years that I've been in the business, I've even seen a lot of changes myself in record companies, women moving into senior positions. That's why we're seeing a lot of women being signed too. And women are buying records, and concert tickets. We proved that with Lilith Fair."
Now that Ophelia's on the record store shelves, Natalie Merchant can bask in the theatrical elements of what could be a truly multi-media event. She's already made a companion film for the album, allowing her natural thespian tendencies to come to the fore like never before. In addition there were dance, set and costume design considerations, along with script-writing, all of which resulted in Merchant being enmeshed in the making of the album for a considerable period. After the grand scale of the Lilith gigs, she's looking forward to the chance of performing Opehlia's repertoire in front of a tangible (and hopfully, reachable) audience.
"I'm not really obsessed with numbers the way the record company is", she admits. "If I could play to 1,000 people in every European capital city, I would be so happy. That to me would be a large audience. My goals are usually at odds with the record company's!"
Was it difficult for her to hang on to her vision of the album, in the light of such record company pressure?
"No", she insists, "because I made a lot of concessions in my contract: gave up money for artistic power, artistic control, because that was more important to me. So I choose my own singles, my own directors, design my own packages, put a cap on videos, etcetera, etcetera. The most important thing is that I control the music I make. That's what's most important to me. I've never signed a publishing agreement either, which is pretty unprecedented. I can't stand the thought that I'd give up a portion of control of my own compositions and then I'd get telephone calls from these major corporations saying, you know 'Toyota want to use Kind and Generous as a jingle' - or whatever. That kind of pressure would just drive me crazy. All of this means that I'm probably more indie now than I was when I was in the 10,000 Maniacs."
Merchant is remarkably candid about Ophelia's genesis.
"With Ophelia, I really wanted to play with this whole idea of the singer/songwriter as a personality", she explains. "I wanted to be a singer/songwriter with many personalities because I feel I tell the stories of many people on this album. For example the song The Living isn't about me, but about a gentleman who've I've become acquainted with in my town over the last few years. But I understand what it's like to feel isolated or rejected or to be a disappointment either to myself or to the people I love. I can understand when he tells me 'I was a musician and I destroyed myself with alcohol'. This is a man who used to play trumpet for Count Basie. Most people in my town think he's crazy, but he's not crazy. He's very sick, but he's such a sweet man. Anyway, that's why I wrote the song."
"I could dig deep enough within myself to find empathy and compassion for his situation", she adds, "so the songs are a mixture of biography and autobiography. I guess the album is an attempt to reorganise the way people think about me or about my music. I feel I've taken into my own hands the way I present my own music so why shouldn't I take control of how my image is presented too?"
"Being the Emily Dickinson of pop music, as I've been accused at times, I've occasionally been very florid in my lyrics. But I can also be the Judy Garland of pop music! Sometimes people take me waaaayyyy too seriously!"