"NOT SERIOUS" SEZ JOAN A.
By all appearances, CREEM magazine and Joan Armatrading have very little to say to each other. You know the cliches about us, what with your nose buried in an issue right this minute. And the cliched CREEM reader probably knows only the cliches about Joan Armatrading, if he/she knows anything at all.
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"NOT SERIOUS" SEZ JOAN A.
FEATURES
Laura Fissinger
By all appearances, CREEM magazine and Joan Armatrading have very little to say to each other. You know the cliches about us, what with your nose buried in an issue right this minute. And the cliched CREEM reader probably knows only the cliches about Joan Armatrading, if he/she knows anything at all. Well, listed up, riff-raff. Preachers driving Cadillacs know that you don’t try to convert the converted.
Religion? Ah, funny you should mention that. More than a few Joan Armatrading fans couch their ardor in the posture of somber-faced church-pew podsWith fans like Sunday morning television, who needs detractors? Well, maybe we distort a little here, but rabid Fans of Fun are hardly drawn to Armatrading by the party-hearty vibes.
“During my first gigs I used to get very, uh, fed up when on stage, because everyone was so serious looking at me. I really hated it. I almost felt like they’d take a notebook out any minute. 1 didn’t want to look at them because it wasn’t like having fun, and that’s what 1 was up there for, that’s what I wanted to do.”
Not too many of us were there playing Gary Cooper at you back then, Joan. So where’d we get the idea that you needed remedial ho-hos? What fed the legend, eh, Joan?
“Well, sometimes when I do interviews, I’ll get specific questions like about chordings or the like. But it’s pointless, even for a musician reading an article, really. It’s the way you put one chord next to another that means something. I used to dislike interviews, but I’ve gotten used to them. In the old days, you would have asked me a question and I would have just said ‘yes’ or ‘no.’” Joan puts one slim hand over a huge grin and laughs. “I think maybe writers thought that because I just said ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ that I had some great secret. It wasn’t that—it was just me getting used to some stranger sitting there and asking me questions about myself.”
Then there’s the allergy that rock ’n’ roll rabble have to profound librettos. Not me buster, intimates Joan, and she’s got plenty of kinky fiction to prove it on her latest and greatest LP, The Key. “My two favorite releases of my own are How Cruel and The Key. Generally, the songs I write aren’t about me, but they can be connected to something in my past or future or what have you. I make the songs sound like they’re about me. But this LP definitely isn’t even as personal lyrically as ones before. I know how far away certain things are from me. Like ‘(I Love It When You) Call Me Names,’ ‘Bad Habits,’ ‘The Dealer’—I understand them, I see them happening, but they aren’t me. Maybe musically this LP is very personal because it’s the stuff I’ve enjoyed the most.”
"I have the attitude that I'm going to have fun, regardless."
As well it might be. There’s more afoot this time than her consistent professionalism, dignity, expertise, honesty. As if it weren’t enough to be all those things but, somehow, for the United States’ records buyers, it never has been. Writers and other eggheads long ago noted Armatrading’s virtues, but virtue didn’t always make the music sparkle. Her ecumenical mix of styles was always interesting, but not always invigorating. Her resume as producer, writer, singer, guitarist and feminist heroine maybe scared off a few folks and the music didn’t lure them back. But since How Cruel, and being in cahoots with producer Steve Lilly white, Armatrading no longer sounds good for you like whole wheat buns and tofu are good for you. The Key may be as nutritious as bean sprouts, but it tastes like barbequed ribs. Bring out the napkins!
The evidence revealing a just-folks Joan piles up, once you get the lady rolling. If she’s such an artiste, then how come it takes her only five weeks to make an LP like The Key? Artistes like to control the breathing rates of studio cleaning ladies; Joan chortles and confesses that sometimes she forgets to tell producers what she’s thinking. (“Now I make demos before I go into the studio, and that helps.”) Woops! She lives in the country, collects cars, collects English comic books, and fails consistently to practice her guitar. “Every time I sit down to do that,” she grins, “I end up writing a song.” Is she always shooting for the meaningfulness her fans credit her with? “To me, some of the things in my music seem so straightforward,
I don’t really see why people have to search so hard for meaning. Generally, it’s nice that they like the music enough to want to get into all that. It’s pointless to try to change those sorts of attitudes, no matter what even I say.” She shrugs, she smiles and says that (onstage, some nights), she very nearly crawls on her belly like a reptile. “I don’t do any drugs or drink, but people will ask me what I’m on because I just can’t stop. Maybe a bit of the old reverence stuff was my fault, because I was so serious onstage. But I was serious because they were so serious. Now I just have the attitude that I’m going to have fun, regardless. And so now everyone is enjoying themselves more.”
Well, Joan, CREEM has no\fr done its bit toward the joyous ruination of your esteemed rep. The rest, with our traditionally smarmy best wishes, is up to you. ^
