Ms Lene Lovich is in her dressing room at London's Lyric Theatre where she appears nightly (for some 4 weeks) in the musical play about Mata Hari.
"I came to see a show at the same theatre at the beginning of the year in January; it was written by a friend of mine, Chris Judge Smith, and when I came to see it, I was having a lot of problems with my record company."
"I was really personally depressed, but I was excited to see music happening in an alternative way because unless you have a record out it's very difficult to perform live. It's the professional business and everybody has to be paid, people who do the lights, the band, and if you don't have the record out, it's impossible to do it."
"I was quite excited about the idea to do the music in the theatre situation. Actually, about four years ago I was talking to the same guy, Chris, how do you show somebody a story for a film if you have got an idea for it - how do you present it to somebody ? He told me that you write something called "treatment", showing me one he was commissioned to do about Mata Hari, but never realized. So it was a combination of events that led me to do something like this."
The play, authored by Lene, her faithful companion for many years, Les Chappell and old friend (from the days of art-studies, later founder-member of remarkable but ill-fated Van Der Graaf Generator) Chris Judge Smith, is factionalized account of one of this century's most intriguing persons. Mata, who had bursted upon Paris in 1905 with her unique oriental dance, on engagement in Berlin at the outbreak of First World War, returned to Paris only to be executed in the charge of espionage in 1917.
Lene, with her almost eccentric looks and fascinating way of performing, has been the only possible choice to bring to the stage life the enigma and mystery of Mata. But, the critics haven't thought so and not very good write-ups ensued.
She laughs genuine wholeheartedly: "On one hand it's true because on the night the press came, I was very ill, being sick the week before the opening and the first week of showing; I couldn't really sing well, even now my throat is not in the usual shape. They didn't get the best performance from me, I didn't have much energy to really give the part the real spark."
"And we were a little under-rehearsed because I had been telling my record company for nine months that we'd be doing the show. Of the only three weeks to rehearse, they sent me off to New York to finish the album for a week, so we really had only two weeks to get it right."
"Also, we have very strange critics, some said 'Why should a singer make a show about the dancer ?' But, why not ? Does it mean that I should only make a musical about singers ? And I do believe that they like to keep arts separate; that's not what I was hoping to achieve. I was hoping for some kind of communication even though I've always said that I wasn't an actress."
"I wanted to bring arts together, somehow, and in the show we have everything: puppets, music, little bit of dance, small amount of choreography ... I was hoping that the idea would work so that we could try and progress and do another one. Maybe we'll still be able to ..."
Any possibility that you put the songs from the stage production on the vinyl ?
"I'd like to but I don't think that I'll have any help from my record company. They've all come to see the show and I can only suggest and maybe they'll agree, it may happen. If it comes to it, we'd develop the songs a bit more, maybe give more information needed without the visual support."
"I think that the record company in here has changed in some way, maybe because of the circumstances that made them have different priorities. I don't think that my priorities have changed, but theirs have: for one, they are bigger company now, they employ more people, they have bigger overheads and they have become very successful with the singles here in Britain. And, that's where their emphasis really is; unless they can see that recording will be a hit-single, they are not interested."
"About two years ago, I started to record the new album, and couple of people came down and they weren't really happy about it because they couldn't see the hit-single. They have been waiting for me to change, they started not to like the way I look and they didn't even want to like the way I sang. What they were looking for, it was explained to me that they wanted to hear something coming from me that nobody would know that it was me. A song that could have been done by anybody, in other words. They were afraid that the public was tired of the way that I looked and the way that I sounded, and if I could do something more anonymous and more universal, I would have wider appeal."
To lose your identity and adopt a corporate image ?!
"Yes, that was the idea and it was put to me in many different ways, in many different versions by different people from the company. And all this time they've been waiting for me to change, but it doesn't work that way; they thought that if they stopped me from working I'd have to change eventually."
"In some ways you can say that what I've done now is some kind of a compromise, and if it is, it's acceptable to me. I like this record very much and they do too. It's very strange because some of the numbers are two years old, with the same backing tracks..."
"They sent me off to America to re-mix the album thinking that he (Bob Clearmountain who's worked with the Stones, Church, Roxy Music etc.) would take out all the craziness that they didn't like and he'd make it sound better. When we got there, he balanced it better for hi-fi freakos, made tracks sound more unifying because they were recorded in different studios, made them appear like one record. He hasn't changed much of the essence, it's still our album."
"I like everybody at Stiff and to have to go and look for another record company will be like running away from home," she smiles.
Les has come in during the conversation but, with his head buried in the papers, he utters not a single word.
The song that opens the new album, at the same time the new single "It's You, Only You (Mein Schmerz)" contains the leitmotif for Ennio Morricone's score for the spaghetti-western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
"That's the truth, and it's not my song; it's from the guys who used to be in a Dutch band called The Meteors, they are disbanded now. That riff was already in there when I picked it up, and I was glad that it was in there because I've always been a big fan of Ennio Morricone and I wouldn't mind people mentioning his name in connection with mine, even if they thought I'd stolen it."
Wouldn't the title of "No-Woman's-Land" have been better ?
"Yes, but it's traditional form of speech; Stiff didn't like it either ... the only thing they liked from the start was Les' picture of me for the cover. We decided to keep it in the family."
"Maybe all my problems are over now, or rather that is what I'd like to think," she adds as an after-thought. "It's become such a big problem for me that I'm happy to have an album out, at all."
"Sister Video (penned by J. O'Neill of Fingerprintz) is the most likeable offer of the nine, but Special Star and Rocky Road are more to the point, dealing with the coercion of the business."
"All my songs are autobiographical, very personal ... I wouldn't really like to say, I'd rather let the songs speak for themselves and to have more of the audience participation."
It's the most probable that this album will face the criticism of "not-a-big-change" after the two years lull.
"I haven't changed so much because you can only change by doing things. I'm the person who do things with feeling and intuition, doesn't plan it, I like things to happen naturally, I only learn by doing one thing at the time. The things that I learned from Flex were translated into this album, because there was nothing in between. It doesn't mean that the quality is any less..."
Dancey record without the commercial sea-songs of this season - it retails the definite Lene Lovich identity.
In 1979, Lene starred in the film "Cha Cha" with Herman Brood and Nina Hagen; following appearances in the Mata Hari play and recent screening of the French TV-movie "Rock". Is she going to pursue acting as a career ?
"Listen, if I didn't have so much trouble with the music industry, most probably I wouldn't be appearing in Mata Hari, nor doing the films. My first and foremost love is the music, so completely satisfying that I could be involved full time with no regrets."
No comments:
Post a Comment