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| Date |
July 18 |
| Type |
Interview |
| Source |
The Sydney Morning Herald |
| Title |
Interview with a vamp |
| Country |
Australia |
| Journalist/Photographer |
/ Polly Borland |
| Text |
She once "lamped" a photographer who got too close. Fortunately, Bernard Zuel catches Alison Goldfrapp in a good mood.
To say Alison Goldfrapp doesn't like interviews is like saying that Mark Latham isn't a fan of John Howard. If you've ever come across an interview with her in one of the British papers, you'd know that getting Goldfrapp to talk is sometimes more painful than extracting teeth with a rusty pair of pliers and no anaesthetic.
It's odd, because she is neither stupid nor inarticulate. Far from it. But pretty much from the first hello, the wariness in her answers, the way each question is handled like a potential dirty bomb about to smear her smock with radioactive dust is enough to set nerves jangling.
Facing a day's worth of phone interviews, I expect she's braced herself for ugliness. I tell Goldfrapp I'm thankful I'm in early while she's on the edge, rather than having fallen over and decided to kill someone.
"Oh, I always fall over and want to kill someone," she says drily, letting a hint of a usually hidden sense of humour slip in.
And, really, the humour shouldn't surprise. She treads warily in the media, but Goldfrapp has been having great fun with the tools of her trade - her voice, her style and her image - since she and one-time film composer Will Gregory paired up three years ago and called themselves Goldfrapp. (Presumably because no one thought a band named Gregory would set the pop world afire.)
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Their debut album, Felt Mountain, was spookily ethereal and beautifully dangerous, all dreamy atmospherics and torch song dramas mixed with vocals that seemed to hover somewhere between Marlene Dietrich and the '50s multi-octave wonder Yma Sumac. In the sleeve pictures, the look was alpine - clean stands of trees and mountain-fresh snow - while in press photos, where Gregory was invisible, Goldrapp was wide-eyed and wrapped in big fur stoles.
The chill-out market discovered them, along with pop lovers. Which made it almost perversely natural that the second Goldfrapp album - this year's Black Cherry - saw the music take a glam rock-meets-disco turn. The packaging went all art-school dynamic and Goldfrapp played up the Dietrich vamp and tossed in some Cyndi Lauper coquettish flair.
"As far as image goes, it's all part of the music, it's part of the expression and mood, the character of the song," says Goldfrapp. "I can't really separate them. It's part of what I do. When I'm writing, I make images and when I make images, I'm writing. It's all part of it.
It's good to see that the time at Middlesex University came in handy.
"Going to art school was really useful for meeting loads of people but also as learning a way of working," she says. "It helped me work out how to sort out ideas, how to carry an idea through."
That manipulation of image may seem like it would make Goldfrapp a natural for TV, a medium that loves nothing more than a memorable picture or three. But having recently survived a brush with the most surreal of music programs, Top of the Pops, she's not so sure.
"We did it and I hated it, really hated it," she says. "On a practical level, I've done very little TV and I'm not that comfortable with it.
I know there are a lot of these kids now who've been trained to do that sort of thing, but I hate the sound of my voice and feel completely inadequate.
"I can't sit still, and I've got shitty teeth and I sound like a drainpipe." She laughs at the mounting hysteria in her voice as she lists these. "It's completely alien to me and I can't watch it or it will make me sick."
Would you do it again?
"Probably, yeah," she laughs.
Is there a worry you may one day find yourself liking it?
"No," she laughs again, this time almost a giggle. "No, I don't think I'd ever like it.
"I don't think I'll ever be comfortable with things like that."
She's barely over the old five feet (153cm), but Goldfrapp has a reputation for taking matters into her own hands, literally. There's a celebrated story from two years back of her "lamping" a photographer who was getting too close during one appearance.
Naturally, then, she's taken aback when I ask her if she fears TV, or indeed, if she fears anything.
"I've got insecurities, yeah, like anybody," she says, back to her wary self. "But creatively, no, I don't. I think being creative is about freedom and I want to feel as free as possible."
The key is being prepared to fail, isn't it?
"Yeah, totally," she perks up. "Some of the most talented, most fantastic artists, musicians do shit sometimes.
"That's life, that's human." |
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