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|
| Date |
March 7 2003 |
| Type |
Interview |
| Source |
Scotland on Sunday |
| Title |
Beware of the mood swings |
| Country |
Scotland, UK |
| Journalist/Photographer |
Aidan Smith |
| Text |
ALISON Goldfrapp is so small that, fearing I might break her tiny, twig-like fingers when we meet in Glasgow?s Hilton Hotel, I offer up my wettest-ever handshake.
I am Peter Mandelson. I am Matthew Kelly. I am H from Steps. No, I am the deluxe shammy - should they ever form a joint window-cleaning business - that they?d use to wipe down front-of-house for Michael Ball first nights.
Maybe I would stand a better chance today as one of that lot because Goldfrapp, singer in the band of that name, doesn?t like journalists. She punched a photographer once and it sounds as if there were plenty of other occasions when, well, if looks could kill...
It is rock-star prerogative to wear sunglasses indoors and I cannot see her eyes through her saucer-sized Chanel shades. But something tells me they?re not pouting post-coitally as they do on the album covers. That handshake possibly didn?t get me off to the best of starts, but over the course of the next 60 awkward minutes, I clearly do some other things wrong, too. Like breathing.
The feeling used to be mutual. Nothing actually personal, but by the time I caught up with the first Goldfrapp album, Felt Mountain, I?d had my fill of dinner-party music - productivity of these mellow sounds had got out of control, resulting in a chillout mountain. But last year?s follow-up, Black Cherry - inspired by love gone wrong - ditched most of the ethereal stuff for a frantic, 3am coupling of disco and glam in a sleazy nightclub toilet. A woman of moods, then.
In conversation, she has just the one mood: contrary. She corrects my grammar. She answers a question with a mild accusation. She sighs and sulks and fidgets with the giant skull belt-buckle on her jeans. And she never uses fully formed sentences when one word will do.
The first music to make an impact on her as a young girl was classical, through her parents, who required her to listen to difficult symphonies then provide critiques. At the time, all she wanted to do was practise her skipping, but later she came to appreciate the benefits of Shostakovich before lunch. "It was good," she says, from under a thatch of mad, streaked hair.
What was her convent school like? "Good." And - after a switch because she was deemed "academically retarded" - her comprehensive? "Good." Her most vivid childhood memory? "Oh, there were lots of good ones." A trauma-free adolescence, then? "Some of it was good and some of it was? [the suspense is killing - is she about to give up a different word?]? not so good."
Goldfrapp is in Glasgow to, um, promote her band?s support slot on Duran Duran?s comeback tour. There?s also a new single, the title track from the album, a reflective, cigarette-moment after all that dirty, squelchy bump ?n? grind. So has her audience changed along with the music?
"It?s younger now. Before it was lots of older men." Wasn?t she concerned about turning off her more mature fans, the recently identified species "fifty-quid blokes", who are now firmly established as rock?s biggest consumers? "Yes, but for us [Goldfrapp and cohort Will Gregory] music isn?t about a formula, it?s about trying out different things." So what got into her during the writing and recording of the sexed-up Black Cherry? "I was doing a lot of f***ing. F***ing was what I was doing." So there you have it.
Goldfrapp, 32, grew up in Alton, Hampshire, where the rural small-town ennui stuck to her like moss. Much more alluring were the sounds that seeped under her door from the bedrooms of her five older siblings. "Bolan, Bowie, Roxy - a lot of glam," she says. "And the thing I liked about glam was the layeredness of the drums, it was such a thick sound, almost choral. It?s not cool to say this now, but Gary Glitter, who used two drummers, did some fantastic stuff back then."
The first record she bought was Chaka Khan?s ?I?m Every Woman? so you can see how disco and glam bagged off with each other for Black Cherry.
After what, for her, must rate as verbosity, Goldfrapp soon lapses back into her impersonation of a boot-faced police sergeant. She makes a comparison between singing and acting - she once toyed with the idea of doing the latter - but when I do this, she insists they?re completely different. I ask her about her DJ-ing and she says: "It?s nothing." What about movies, what kind does she like? "Good ones." Then, finally, she admits: "I?m moody and I?m difficult."
The business of having to talk about herself obviously does nothing to make sunny her disposition. Interviewers, she says, are variously rude, poorly researched or plain stupid. "I don?t like thick people," she says, "and I won?t humour them." She and Gregory used to do interviews together, but female journalists kept commenting on her clothes while reserving serious questions about music for her sidekick, so now she speaks (or not) for herself. And what?s the most annoying trait displayed by male hacks? "That they think they can tame me."
If I sympathise, she?ll probably think I?m being patronising, so I don?t. My next question, as it rattles around in my head, sounds even more dumb, but I ask it anyway.
Is she happy? "I think so, but there?s a line in ?Black Cherry? which goes ?All my world in one grain of sand and I?ve blown it? and that?s about a feeling I had as a kid, and how I wish I could feel it again now, especially when complicated, adult stuff like relationships f*** you up."
Finally, the conversation starts to flow. "I remember down at the beach, how I?d really let my mind go. I?d be lying on my towel at this crummy resort called Church Norton and I?d be squinting at every single grain of sand. Each bit seemed like a little world, and one day seemed like forever.
"As an adult, in your head, you can never get back to that place. You?re always rushing around dealing with rubbish. That old love affair ended sadly and I?m sure when I wrote these words I was wishing I was on the beach, a stranger to everyone, not even knowing myself or what was going on around me."
Just when things were getting interesting, we?ve run out of time. Before she goes, I ask her to reveal something about herself that would induce surprise.
"That I?m a nice person." |
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