BLAH 12/1996
"The bomb changed my life"Text: ?Pictures: ?
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Saturday afternoon Soho is grimly grey and numbingly November. Outside, the central London streets are their usual mix of casual mayhem and serious stress. Right here, right now in "swinging London" Newsweek and anyone else who doesn't live in London there isn't enough room for a swinging cat. But Inside: Inside things are lovely. Lovely and organised and professional. And well-catered. Never-ending pots of steaming tea, soft white cucumber sandwiches, dreamy sponge cake. This, according to the faxed communique' from the international department of the record company, is "Björk 'Telegram' Press Day". So we are in Soho House, a four-storey, highly-discreet private club, favoured venue for the press schmooze, the illicit assignation, or the all-night bender at someone else's expense. "We" are scribblers and snappers, TV folk and radio types from all over the world. Twenty-four of us. The deal? Björk is just back from a tour of South America, where she played a series of 8,000-ish venues in the company of 808 State and other groups too rubbish to mention. Now she has a couple of days free, allowing her time to get wasted at a fancy dress Halloween ball for umpteen-thousand scenesters in a big shed on the banks of the Thames [that was last night; Björk went dressed as a world-renowned pop phenomenon]; to go to the pictures with her son Sindri to see Dragonheart [that's to be tonight]; to have her flesh depressed by the earnest queries of the international press cadre [that's this afternoon; "So Björk, this fellow with de bomb and all this before heading off to Spain on Wednesday to begin recording her third album proper. Two weeks after that it is Björk's 31st birthday. She will probably be working. Today's schedule clears the singer-songwriter's press and TV duties upfront of the release of her long-promised, often-delayed remix project, Telegram. BIork will only be on-duty for two hours. Everyone will get their 500 eurograms of flesh. Except us. We will get the full meaty kilo, after the quick-change press conference, in an exclusive one-on-one. When you are Björk and multi-successful, things are smooth and organised. Or rather, when you are Björk and smooth and organised, things are multi-successful. "She's a professional," says Tricky of his one-time paramour. "She can deal with it. She could go to a club and people would fuck with her and she could deal with it. But she's been doing it since she was 11. It weren't no love thing. We needed each other at that time. I met her; she supported me, I supported her, boom." Here, then, is a half-day in the strife of Björk Gudmunsdottir. |
2pm Boomf. |
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2.15pm |
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3.15pm |
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3.30pm-ish |
Björk hops over to the table. "We heard the tape," says Japan#1, "and it's very good." "Okay,"
chirrups Björk. "Tank you.
I actually feel quite awkward because it
isn't my work. I did one remix myself, 'You've Been Flirting Again', and
obviously me and Evelyn Glennie, that was just us
[the only new track on
Telegram is 'My Spine', a deliciously sparse collaboration between the
all-hearing Icelandic singer and the deaf Scottish percussionist].
She
lives in Oxford and I just went to her house and we ate a lot of biscuits
and drank a lot of tea and she took out exhaust pipes and we just made up
that song and recorded it in ten minutes.
"I find the remix album a real turn on. And I think remixes aren't
respected enough. They're like the record company trying to get money or
trying to get the song played on the radio or in clubs. Whereas most of my
remixes make sure they're not! So remixes - I've even funny feelings about
the word -it's like recycled or something... I don't know what I'd prefer.
'Alternative version' or 'interpretation' is a bit snobby..." "What happened to me was I obviously lived
in Iceland and did loads of
records and was really loyal to the people and worked with the same people
ten years. Then I moved four years ago to England, and just met all these
brilliant, genius musician people. And now I've really been spoiled rotten
cos I've gotten to work with most of them. I've met people, both musicians
and people that make beats, as varied cards as, say, Talvin Singh and
fuckin' Tricky. And for me really this is like the end of that period."
"You say it's the end," wonders Britain. "How? What comes next?" 'Do you already started writing songs for next album?" asks Japan#2. "Yeah," replies Björk, "I've got it written. It's mostly based on string quartets. I wrote all of them on my Asian tour. I had my computer with me. And I'm actually recording it on Wednesday!" "Ahh, ah-hah, titter; wow," we say. Japan#1 wants to know how she got in contact with the Brodsky Quartet [who worked on Telegram's 'Hyperballad' revamp]. "Oh I just called them up really," Björk grins, sipping her frothy cafe' latte. "I worked with all the people in Iceland. From fucking opera music to teaching children to play recorders. Then when I called up Graham Massey in '90, that was the first sort of 'fuckin hell, I've got nothing to lose, if he says no'. And that's what I've been doing ever since." "You once said," pontificates Britain, "that Post was a letter home to your mum in Iceland. Who is Telegram being sent to?" "Well for me Telegram is really Post as well but all the elements of the songs are just exaggerated. It's like the core of Post. That's why it's funny to call it a remix album, it's like the opposite. It's like the cover of Post -me like this [she smiles beatifically] in pink and orange and big ribbon and it's like a pressie for you. But Telegram is more stark, naked. Not trying to make it pretty or peaceable for the ear. Just a record I would buy myself." "Like a letter to yourself?" posits Britain, vainly trying to keep the epistular concept going. "Yeah, more, sort of... fuck what people think. It's a truth thing. Which is maybe a contradiction because it's other people's remixes." "Have you heard the last album of Tricky, Pre-Millennium Tension," Italy wants to know? "Yeah." "Did you like it?" "I think it's gorgeous. I think, I mean, he's the most important person around, he's just so brave. The most important element about Tricky, which I think a lot of people overlook, is his honesty. He's not scared of being ugly. A lot of people are always beautifying themselves and making themselves more glamorous. But it's just truth. And you can't kill that." Japan#1 mentions that sometimes she sees Björk going into a record shop after hours to flip through the shelves. She must like music. "Oh thank you," Björk smiles rising for more cake at the next table. "But I think that's pretty obvious by now. I'm definitely addicted for life." Europe and the Far East disperse politely. No one has dared mention the bomb thing. Britain loiters about, trying to look inconspicuous. |
4pm |
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4.30pm |
MTV wonders, noting the elements of drum'n'bass on Telegram, if Goldie has had any influence on the music? "I moved to London four years ago,"
says Björk, not missing a beat and deftly, deliberately missing the point,
"and an Indian community in
Southall, the string arrangements on the Indian soundtracks and the pirate
jungle stations were the only things I thought were creative. But I don't
know if it's [not 'he's'] influenced me,
I think that's too obvious. The
drum'n'bass scene is something that's thrived and taken ten, twenty years
to brew, and it's a culture, it's not only a music style... I'm just a
visitor here, so I don't think I can just go shopping and say, 'I'll have
some of that please'. But I think that's what's so brilliant about
remixes...
"I don't think Goldie personally has influenced me. We do play a lot of
music for each other but it's not necessarily as obvious as I play him
string quartets and he plays me a bit of Photek. It's not as literal as
that." "Are there any plans to work together;" MTV goes on. "I don't know. Because we talk so much about music - I mean, you'd be surprised where Goldie's influences come from and where my influences come from. And we've nourished each other and we'll continue to nourish each other. That's what's so excellent about musical relationships. You just never know." MTV asks about Goldie's skyscraper flat ["it's very techno, very Goldie"], about "Possibly Maybe", about the European Music Awards. Does she think she'll win in the Best International Female category? "I don't think so," says Björk, her voice now piping and fluting and definitely childlike, "'cos I won last time didn't I... Nah, awards are always like that - you won last time so you don't win again now. Then again, Janet Jackson always wins, don't she. Then again, I'm not her; am I?" Björk's management people loiter by the curtain at the entrance to the dining room. MTV are getting more than their 15 minutes of her fame. Björk says she's been in London for four years "and it's been great. But I'm gonna move." "Out of London or out of the country?" "A bit of both really. But I'm still staying. Strange, innit?" Björk grins and licks her lips. Confused, or maybe trying to confuse with her cuteness. "You can't clarify that?" probes MTV. "Where are you going?" "Oh, it's a bit foggy, eh! Yeah, I've found a lighthouse. On Gibraltar And I'm gonna put a pipe organ in it. And play it at midnight. Every night." She pronounces the 'G' in Gibraltar like the 'G' in guitar. After this remark there is a small silence that feels like a big silence. MTV pushes on, feeling for a way to ask about the "incident" with the fanatic in America who sent Björk a parcel-bomb then killed himself. "The bomb incident changed my life definitely," muses Björk. "But not in the way that people probably think. Because the biggest test has been to my relationships with my friends and my family. I've got a brilliant job -I can wake up in the morning with a song in my head and before I go back to bed it's on vinyl and I can get almost any person I could dream of to play that song with me. And it's literally a dream come true. And I'm ready to take the down side of that, which is being hassled and people thinking I'm things I'm not. But what's difficult is that it affects my friends and my family. And that's kind of where I draw the line. The bomb incident, for example, my only son's life was in danger because I happen to sing through a microphone sometimes. And that's scary. I can take it myself and the effect it has on my life but the fact that my granny gets calls to make waffles for the Daily Mirror; and all my friends are asked if I'm going out with so-and-so. It's been a test and I've never appreciated my friends more than I do now." Apparently, notes MTV, the guy objected to her mixed-race relationship... "I didn't take that so seriously," scoffs Björk. "The guy was called Lopez, which is Latin, and he doesn't want a Icelandic person to go out with a guy who's half-Scottish and half-Jamaican? I'm sorry, that is definitely not the root of the problem. I just think it's very, very sad. The guy obviously suffered but I have to say that I'm emotionally healthy enough not to take it personally. But still it affects me and I cried and I couldn't sleep for nights, just thinking of his face. It's really, really sad." "Do you think that you'll marry Goldie?" MTV wants to know. "I don't think so now." Why? "Well, we've split up to start with. So that won't help marriage. I don't know, I'm not really a marriage kind of person." And the man from Björk's management says 'okay, thanks very much'. |
4.45pm |
Einar from The Sugarcubes thought music was a bogus way to communicate?
Have you convinced him that he's wrong?
"I have this ongoing argument with Nellee Hooper Ever opened anyone else's mail?
Do you check your credit card bill?
Do you remember the first love letter you wrote?
Do you remember the first fan letter you got?
You've said your son Sindri appreciates words the way you
appreciate music. Is that still the case?
Do you write to each other on tour?
You and Graham Massey [of 808 State] used to send each other tapes
['Headphones', the last track on Post, is about this]. Were those personal
compilations important to where you are now?
Have you ever split up with anyone by letter?
Have you written a letter to Goldie yet?
What will your new album, your letter from Spain, sound like?"
censor it?
And she's up and off, off to the pictures with her son. Britain senses that the last year - the fame, acclaim, the pain and paranoia - has helped her refocus her priorities, lock down what she and her music and her world are all about. No more self-censorship but, at the same time, more savvy self protection. That next album should make for explosive listening. Let's hope it doesn't bomb. Boom, and indeed, boom.
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