After a five-year hiatus during which she explored the highs and lows
of marriage, motherhood, and divorce, New York songwriter Suzanne Vega
is back to sing about what she’s learned. Her new record, Songs in
Red and Gray, features less of the grinding industrial backdrop
that ex-producer and ex-husband Mitchell Froom brought to her previous
two albums, 99.9° F and Nine Objects of Desire. Instead,
Rupert Hine’s layered production brings Vega’s breathy lyrics and mysterious-sounding
chord progressions back to center stage. The messages strike their target
more forcefully without the extra ornamentation, and the overall effect
harks back to the mid-’80s when Vega grabbed the world’s attention with
such spare and straightforward songs as "Tom’s Diner" and "Luka."
Although Vega’s music continues to feature memorable melodic lines
and the groove factor she picked up while working with Froom, the essence
of her songs has always been her carefully crafted lyrics, and the new
songs are no exception. Vega has a natural tendency to translate emotions
and situations into visual imagery, and those metaphors turn each of
her songs into art.
I met with Vega to discuss her songwriting and guitar technique before
a gig at San Francisco’s Warfield Theater, where a packed house was
treated to new songs interspersed with older numbers spanning her 16-year
career. The show also featured a couple of illuminating readings from
The Passionate Eye, her 1999 collection of lyrics and essays.
She was supported by Gerry Leonard on acoustic and electric guitars,
Doug Yowell on drums, and Mike Visceglia on electric bass. Despite a
broken arm that prevented her from playing guitar on stage, Vega was
upbeat, funny, and matter-of-fact.
Why did you choose Rupert Hine as the producer for your new CD? Were
you impressed by other records he produced?
Vega The work I’d heard
him do most recently was [singer-songwriter] Duncan Sheik’s record [Duncan
Sheik], which I really liked. He heard a demo tape I did of four
songs, just myself and the acoustic guitar, and he really wanted to
work with me and pursued me pretty aggressively. We got together and
did two songs for the record company last year, "Widow’s Walk" and "Harbor
Song," and I was really happy with the way they came out. They surprised
me; they didn’t have the sound I thought they would.
How did the process work?
Vega I would do a simple
demo, usually just my voice and acoustic guitar and a click track. He
would use that as the skeleton and build things around it. Sometimes
I’d come in later and rerecord the original parts, and sometimes I wouldn’t.
Did he choose the other musicians for the recording, Gerry Leonard
on guitars and mandolin or Elizabeth Taubman on background vocals?
Vega Most of them, although
Mike Visceglia has been my long-standing bass player. We’ve been touring
together for 15 years.
Do the songs change once you start working on them in the studio?
Vega Some change more than
others. I think that if you have a strong narrative, if the idea of
the song can be boiled down to the basics, it won’t change that much.
"Makes Me Wonder" changed quite a bit from the demo to the final version,
because it’s a lot more produced. But most of the time, Rupert really
caught what I was doing with the acoustic guitar and just added a layer
of orchestration and made it fuller and richer.
But you’re not adding verses or writing last-minute bridges in the
studio?
Vega Not on this record.
Not at all. The songs had to be at a pretty advanced stage for me to
bring them in.
Would you say that there are things Mitchell Froom added to your music
that you’ve held on to?
Vega Yeah, a rhythmic awareness
of what could happen in the songs. Working with Mitchell was a lot of
fun because he was bass-led. When we were working on those two records
[99.9° F and Nine Objects of Desire], Mitchell
played a lot of the bass parts. He was influenced by soul music and
Motown, so he brought a whole other side to the records I made with
him. I didn’t want to let go of that.
Are you still writing all of your songs on acoustic guitar?
Vega Yeah, although the
melody for "(I’ll Never Be) Your Maggie May" just flew into my mind,
and then I worked out chords around it. That’s unusual. The only other
time that happened was "Tom’s Diner" [the a cappella opener on Solitude
Standing]. Most of the time it’s just me sitting and fooling around
with the guitar. I tried other instruments, too. I owned a Fairlight
[keyboard] for a while and was trying to go the Peter Gabriel/Kate Bush
route [laughs]. I was just not cut out for that. I ended up giving
it away and going back to my guitar.
Have you experimented at all with open tunings?
Vega No, I try to figure
out what I can get out of straight tuning. I don’t like having to fiddle.
It’s hard enough for me to keep it in tune. If I want to hear something
more ambiguous, then I’ll leave out a few notes, I’ll leave it open.
I can write a song with two strings and just play that.
Were any songs on the current CD written like that?
Vega Yeah. "Makes Me Wonder."
I think the verses were written on one string. It’s ironic, because
the production is huge on that one, but it was all built on this one
string. The chorus was made with chords, but the other parts weren’t.
After the fiasco of buying the Fairlight and being overwhelmed by all
these choices on the keyboard—there’s 88 keys and like 98 million sounds
you can choose from—just to go back to the simplicity of the six strings
of the guitar was such a relief.
Are you fingerpicking when you’re writing?
Vega It depends. I fingerpick
a lot because I can get more of a range of feeling from the guitar than
I can when I bash away with a pick. But sometimes I want that pick sound,
too.
Where did you learn your picking style? Are you self-taught?
Vega I had some informal
lessons from a woman who used to rent rooms from my family when I was
growing up in New York. She taught me some chords. Some of it I learned
from my stepfather, some of it from my uncles. Most of it was taken
from these books we had around the house. One was called The Pop
Songs of the ’60s or something. They had little pictures in them
that would show you where to put your fingers. Once I realized that
that’s how it worked, I would sit there for hours and learn the songs.
There are times when I regret not having had more formal training, though.
I play for almost two hours every night—I tour a lot—and I get a lot
of aches and pains here and there. My bass player watches me play and
says there’s way too much tension in my hands. That’s one reason to
get some lessons, so you can learn how to actually play, so that
you can have fluidity and strength in your fingers.
But figuring out how to read those chord diagrams was enough to
get you going as a kid?
Vega Yeah. The chords I
found the most beautiful were the ones like in that song "Sunny" from
the ’60s. That had gorgeous chords. To me, each chord had a color and
would tell a kind of story: An E-major chord was happy and uncomplicated,
an E minor was a little more sad, diminished and augmented chords were
mysterious and sort of religious feeling. So I would build a little
story using the chords as blocks and putting them together in a structure
that I could remember. It was very simple, but it worked.
And the lyrics came after?
Vega Sometimes I’d have
lyrical ideas, or I’d rummage around and see if I had anything written
that fit that melody. But for a long time the melody or the beginning
of a melody would come first.
Is that how you continue to write today?
Vega I’ve written all different
ways. You do whatever you have to do to get yourself going. I’ve written
the chords first, I’ve written the lyrics first, I’ve written them both
together at the same time. I’ve written in the studio. I’ve written
and recorded at the same time. I’ve finished the song after we
recorded it and then run in to do the vocal.
Are you constantly writing down little bits of lyrics into a notebook?
Vega Yes, I have a lot
of notebooks. Sometimes you can get good stuff that was written ten
years before—you can mine a verse or an interesting phrase. I get it
wherever I can get it, really [laughs].
Does being the mother of a six-year-old affect your writing process?
Vega A lot! I have less
time. I spend more time with my daughter trying to get her to do stuff.
That’s what being a parent is all about: getting them into bed and out
of bed and into the bath and out of the bath . . . so you don’t have
all that free time to lie around and daydream about chords and fantasy
worlds. So I find I’m a lot more focused about working and more inclined
to follow an impulse where it will take me right away. I’m less inclined
to edit myself.
Last year, when I was working on the album, I would lie down with Ruby
before she went to sleep—because she’s still at the age where she doesn’t
like the dark. That was a time when I would start thinking about something:
a song or an idea. After Ruby was asleep, I’d immediately go into my
office and see where that original impulse would take me. Usually within
an hour or two, I would have the whole song. If I thought about it twice,
I probably would have said, "This is kind of silly. I don’t know that
this belongs on the album." But I just said, "OK, it’s done, it’s a
song. I’m not going to judge it. I’m just going to bring it in." There’s
something about being focused like that that’s very freeing.
Do you still go back and edit and analyze after the fact?
Vega I do. But usually
there’s a cooling-off period. If I try to go back to the song after
the cooling-off period, it’s almost impossible to get it. It kind of
hardens, and I can’t get back into it. Although "Widow’s Walk" took
almost a month to get right. I started with the verses and with the
metaphor of the ship, but it sounded awfully repetitive to me. I mean,
it was meant to be repetitive, because the idea in the song is that
you keep returning to the same place. Still, I felt that it needed a
major-key chorus to really lift it up, and it took me a while to get
there.
Many of your songs include clear, visual images—things that feel
like elements of dreams or very old childhood memories. Do these images
come from dreams?
Vega My mind works in a
metaphorical way. If I’m moved by something, I’ll see things really
clearly. It’s like dreaming, but I’m awake. That’s how I know when a
song is going really well: if I see everything clearly in my mind’s
eye. If I’m working on a song and having trouble with it, I’ll try to
make myself see it, and say, "OK, what’s missing? Can I get the details
to come in?" I think it’s a bit unusual, but that’s the way I’ve always
seen things, especially emotional things. It’s easier for me to say
what I see than what I feel. The emotions are expressed in the images.
I think it must be genetic, because my daughter, Ruby, thinks the same
way. There are things she says and does that are startlingly reminiscent
of that. She’ll see smoke coming out of the back end of a car and say,
"The smoke is tap-dancing." And if you look at it, you can see what
she means.
Is she on tour with you?
Vega She’s with her dad
right now. We’ve spent this whole week in California, and Mitchell lives
in California, so she’s visiting him.
Does she still hate it when you play guitar?
Vega She hasn’t complained
about it so much recently. She used to hate it. She used to say, "Tigger
feels jealous when you have the guitar in your lap." But most of the
time I play after she goes to sleep. She’s kind of interested right
now in her own ideas of a band. She hasn’t gotten into playing the guitar.
She’s playing the recorder and the bongos, and she does both at the
same time [laughs].
Are you inspired by other writers?
Vega I used to listen to
Freedy Johnston songs, and the way that he wrote always sounded somewhat
ambiguous and incomplete, so it would spur me to "finish" what he had
written. In listening to his songs, you could start to see possibilities
in daily life that maybe you wouldn’t have otherwise. Others have affected
me that way, too: Lou Reed, for example. He opened up this whole world
of what you could write about—what was real and what was in front of
you.
Like physical objects?
Vega No, like violence,
like things that happened in your life. Or mental illness. Things that
are a part of life but that most people don’t think to write a song
about. Most people want to write about love or present some sort of
ideal world. When I started listening to Lou Reed, I realized that you
didn’t have to do that. You could just write about what you knew to
be true. Originally, my way of writing was more like Leonard Cohen’s,
which is very internal and all about your feelings and the mysteries
of life. Lou Reed boils everything down to a simple premise [laughs].
It was very good for me to listen to him because it made me get to the
point!
For this last album, I went back to a songwriters’ group I had been
part of for years. When I was at Barnard College, I started going down
to Jack Hardy’s group in the Village. It was loosely called the Greenwich
Village Songwriters’ Exchange. It has continued for the past 25 years.
I happened to mention to Jack that I was having a problem getting back
into writing. So he said, "Why don’t you come back to the group?" and
it really worked. You’re supposed to come in with a song every week,
which I’m not able to do even under the best of circumstances. But I
would come out with one once a month or so, and that was terrific. It
made me focus on my writing, knowing that there was a group of people
who were going to be listening, and I couldn’t hide behind the production.
I didn’t have a microphone or anything.
How many people are in the group?
Vega Anywhere from five
to 25. It’s very fluid. Sometimes you write a song, and nobody says
anything. And you think, "Maybe they didn’t hear it." And then a week
or two later someone will make a mention of it. Other times you write
a song you think is a throwaway, and people will discuss it for 20 minutes.
Most of the criticism is pretty fair. Everyone takes into account who
you are and where you are in your songwriting process. But, for example,
if people thought there was a word that was misleading, they would call
me on it and say, "What do you mean by this?" I didn’t always take the
suggestions, but it was very stimulating being part of the group again.
How many of the songs on the record went through the group?
Vega All of them. Except
the last one, "St. Clare," which was written by Jack Hardy. I think
that’s the only cover I’ve ever done on one of my records. I thank Jack
Hardy and the group [in the liner notes] for the spiritual sustenance.
Where else do you turn for sustenance or inspiration?
Vega Sometimes, for inspiration,
I’ll go back in time. I was using the late 1850s as a kind of inspiration
during this last period when I was breaking up with my husband. I was
thinking about women who wrote and women who were solitary, Emily Dickinson
and Emily Brontë, and trying to get whatever pictures I could.
Then I was thinking about images of the past, and how they’re misleading.
And that led directly to the song "Last Year’s Troubles."
Right, the one where you sing about pirates and their swashbuckling
clothes, how picturesque it all is.
Vega It’s about how you
see these romantic images of pirates and stuff, and how exciting it
is. But really they were just troublemakers, just nasty guys. Why are
those pirates so entertaining? Are people more evil now or were they
more evil then? I wrote the song before the World Trade Center attack,
so the question is more in the air now than when I wrote it.
Did the terrorist attacks in New York change your opinion about
how much evil there is now as compared to then?
Vega Well, I think we have
bigger tools now. We have more technology. If evil were a thing you
could quantify, I’d say that there’s the same amount today as there
was back then. Human nature is human nature.
Have the attacks changed your touring life?
Vega They haven’t changed
my touring life, but they’ve changed my life. They’ve had a huge effect
on the songwriters’ community that I’ve been part of. Everyone’s starting
to trickle in with their songs and their ideas, and we’re all talking
about politics now in a way that we hadn’t been in the past. Everyone
is galvanized now.
Discography
SUZANNE VEGA
Songs in Red and Gray, Interscope/A&M 10493 (2001).
Nine Objects of Desire, A&M 540583 (1996).
In Concert [live], One World 910068 (1993).
99.9° F., A&M 540005 (1992).
Days of Open Hand, A&M 5293 (1990).
Solitude Standing, A&M 5136 (1987).
Suzanne Vega, A&M 5072 (1985).
Excerpted from Acoustic
Guitar magazine, February 2002, No. 110.
