My best/worst interview: PJHarvey by Sarah Smith
http://www.fasterlouder.com.au/features ... -PJ-Harvey Tue 16th Jul, 2013 in Features
As part of a new series, we’re asking journalists to share the stories behind their most memorable interviews – from caustic rockstars to demure artistes. FL editor SARAH SMITH kicks things off with a cautionary tale about meeting your idol.
Interviewing an artist whose work means a lot to you can be dangerous territory. If the conversation doesn’t meet your expectations you risk unsettling your relationship with their music forever. But it can also be thrilling, or just a whole lot of dumb fun. Over the years I’ve been confused by Courtney Love, charmed by Mike Patton and laughed my arse off with Weezer.
In January 2012 I was offered a face-to-face interview with PJ Harvey as part of my coverage of Hobart’s MONA FOMA festival. I had previously spoken with her over the phone, around the release of Let England Shake, and it had been everything I had hoped for. She was passionate, engaged and gave me a unique insight into one of her greatest works.
But the Harvey I encountered in Hobart was locked in a very different headspace. She was about to perform the very last show of a year-long tour and I was to be her very last interview for some time. The circumstances were also physically challenging; after a series of miscommunications we would eventually meet in an over-heated hotel room, flustered and close to show time. All of these things made for a strange, and occasionally awkward interview, which at the time left me bitterly disappointed.
And yet as the months passed and my recorder sat gathering dust in my bedroom drawer so I could avoid listening to it, I gained some perspective and eventually wrote it all down. And funnily enough two years on from the interview I look back on it with fondness. Here it is for the first time.
I can hear Polly Jean Harvey’s lilting voice bouncing around the cavernous shed; the distinctive tremolo of Four Lads’ ‘Istanbul’ sample wobbling through the air. My ear is pressed up against a giant steel door and arctic winds are burning my face. The sound is flawless. The band don’t stop, or miss a beat – just once through and then silence.
I can’t see them as I am locked outside, rubbing my iced ears and waiting for PJ’s manager to call me. After a confusing back-and-forth between her Australian label and the UK it has been decided I will meet PJ, or Polly – I’m still unsure what to call her when the time comes – backstage, three hours before she is due to headline MONA FOMA. It will be her final show on the year-long Let England Shake tour, and I am her final interview; the last prying mind in an endless chain of inquisitions.
The security guard, who sidled his huge girth alongside me not long after I started peering through cracks, doesn’t believe me. He thinks I am a crazed fan. An autograph hunter. A bunny boiler. My leg twitches urgently, propelled by a mix of nerves and frustration. This does little to quell his suspicions. I look at him, he at me. “Though shall not pass!” his blood-shot eyes bellow.
So I wait. My heart beating faster as I masochistically indulge all the possible scenarios that lie ahead: Will she like me? Will I regale her with questions never asked and sly observations about her life’s work that I am almost certain no-one has ever made? Or, will she be rude, aloof, disengaged? I dwell on this last thought – the worst possible outcome – and a mild panic grips at my guts, swiftly moving up my esophagus like a glass of lumpy milk. “Look, they appear to be driving away now.”
The security guard prods me with a gloved hand and I break away from my rabbit hole. Following his gaze I see a dark stick-like figure climb into the back of a van. Mick Harvey follows. “Oh God,” I wheeze.
As a white Tarrago swings by loaded with bodies, I see PJ tucked in the back staring cat-like out the window. Right past me, over my shoulder, through the burly security guard, to the sea. I call her manager. There has been a mixup (a “miscommunication”) but I can still conduct the interview if I meet them at their hotel in 20 minutes. I just need to arrange a room. I can feel the security guard’s smug grin burning into my back as I dash off to a nearby taxi rank.
As I ask the cabbie to take me to the hotel I’ve scrawled on my hand, he smiles. He accelerates 500m across the waterfront and pulls up next to Harvey and her entourage disembarking from their van. I stare at my driver for a moment, his eye twinkling below its lazy skin, “That’ll be $3.80.” I pull out $5. “Keep the change,” I reply, sliding down low in the seat and slipping out the driver’s side to avoid being seen.
When the coast is clear I throw my shoulders back, flatten my wind-swept bouffant and wipe some dampness off my cheek. All I need to do is act confident, and convince a 5-star hotel to let me use one of their rooms to interview PJ Harvey. I flatten my hair some more.
“Helloooooo,” a concierge called Adam purrs as I place my note pad, with great authority, on the hotel desk.
“I’m in a spot of bother” I say, having not once uttered those words in my 27 years. “I was meant to interview Ms Harvey in her room, however, that is no longer possible.” I pause and lean in a little closer to Adam, “So we’ll need to arrange another space for the interview.”
Adam nods understandingly, “Just wait here Miss.”
I sit and draw stars in my notebook, fully expecting the concierge to return at any moment with hotel security. Amanda Palmer clomps past me dressed in layers of clothes, laughing and yelling. Adam reappears, beckoning me with a flick of his wrist. I am left utterly speechless as he escorts me into a conference room – adorned with a faux-Sidney Nolan and jug of water – rather than “discreetly” out the back door. I grin at Adam like a maniac. He grins back.
I hear footsteps approaching and that lump of milk resurfaces, defiantly curling its way upwards. My hand shakes as I pour a glass of water, liquid plopping on the desk and down my arm. I glance up and notice that the heater has been set to 26 degrees. My face begins to glow, and just as the footsteps reach the door a scarlet blob begins to take shape on my chest. It looks like a squished wombat.
“Hello” a short Englishwomen rounds the corner walking towards me with her hand outstretched, “Polly will be here soon”
“Not a problem” I reply, too loudly, rubbing my chest.
I focus on small talk, how the tour has been, how they can’t believe it’s finally over, how I am Polly’s very last interview for a very, very long time. The Wombat expands like fermenting roadkill as PJ enters the room.
“Polly this is Sarah, I’ll leave you to it,” the tour manager smiles as she clicks the door closed behind her, instantly catapulting the mercury up, at least, another two degrees.
Harvey gaits towards me, long strides driven by her hips, creating a lengthy pause between each consecutive step. She is wearing all black: heeled boots, pants and a sleeveless top. She is shorter than I imagined. As she sits in front of me I immediately notice her exposed arms, they look frail and I try not to stare.
Dramatic black curls frame her face and in such close proximity she looks ageless. Her features are exceedingly full – lips, nose and eyes – dark and intense. She lifts the corner of her mouth slightly and stares at me with serious eyes, like she is watching an instructional DVD, or the plot-clinching scene in a murder mystery. My body suddenly feels very large; my voice, cacophonous.
“How are you feeling, so close to the show now?” I boom.
“Good,” Harvey nods, lifting the corner of her mouth again.
“It must be quite different to be playing in a wharf…?”
“No, we’ve played a few venues like that. It’s quite common to play in a venue like that as we’ve been on tour for over a year.”
The last time I spoke with Harvey, she was in Dorset, England. I was in the backseat of a discoloured, rusted-out 1981 Sigma, having only just arrived back from Meredith Music Festival in time to take her call. She had finally released Let England Shake and was relaxed and buoyant; gushing about this great piece of work she had produced.
Today is different. I can see she has let the album go, she has said everything there is to be said about it and is already thinking about what comes next. She doesn’t have time to reflect. The window is closed.
I nudge it open nonetheless.
“The last time I spoke to you, you had just released Let England Shake and you talked with great excitement about letting it out into the world to take on its own life – 12 months on, has it taken on the life you hoped for?”
Harvey gently pours a glass of water, momentarily pausing to look at me. Every movement she makes is very deliberate and paced. Her pale skin blushes and I touch my own cheeks, which I am certain have turned scarlet in the heat.
“It’s taken on the life that I thought it would and one hopes that every piece of work does that, it doesn’t always happen in that way,” she says, slowly and softly in her crisp West Country tongue. “But I find through my experience that the stronger pieces of work that I’ve made do in some ways continue to reform themselves with each day and come along with the times as they change and I think this album is doing that.”
I ask her if she feels differently about a piece of work once it has won a Mercury prize, or been lauded as “the greatest album of her career.”
“I know how I feel about the piece of work that I’ve made as soon as it has finished and that really is the feeling that I listen to, and always has been. And I inherently know whether a piece of work achieved what I was trying to do, or whether it fell short of that, and that is how I measure the success of a piece. Obviously having recognition from the outside world that something has resonated with people is valuable, and I treasure it. And I’m really glad when that happens. But I could never presuppose what makes that happen, so I ever really have to stay true to my own gut feeling.”
She considers everything I say, never taking her eyes off me. But her answers feel open-ended, and I want something I don’t think I’m going to get. I begin to feel light headed, the heat lulling me into a stupor. “You have been on the road for nearly a year now, and the songs already sound so different to how they are on the record – have you noticed the songs changing in the live setting?” I ask, thrusting my eyebrows upwards in a bid to refocus my mind.
“It’s quite normal for songs to grow and change and that takes place throughout the tour, if you are playing the songs quite often, throughout a year like we have done. Each song has different periods of time where it stronger or weaker and they move and change in that way constantly because we are creating something together in the moment, and that is never going to be identical, ever. So that’s why they seem to take on a different form, and so they should. You are very limited in capturing sound, certainly now, digitally, even on analogue tape. I found it easier to capture sound that way, but it is never the same as momentary sound that is there for a second and then gone.”
“Are there any songs on this album that you have grown to love more than others in that process?” I ask.
“No.”
I wait for her to elaborate, but she doesn’t. We sit in silence staring at each other for what feels like an eternity, but what in reality is probably the few seconds it takes me to inhale my next question. Harvey isn’t rude or disengaged, she just doesn’t use “filler.” Words aren’t wasted on chit-chat. I wonder if she ever goes to the pub with mates, laughs during awkward silences, or talks about the weather. Frustrated, I employ some filler of my own, asking her about the band’s current “theatrical” live show, which sees Harvey assume the roll of a kind of narrator.
“I always base the way I want to present a show upon the material. I felt that this way of presenting the music, was what was going to enhance the music and the words. So it is actually a very still show, there is not a lot movement other than creating atmosphere through lighting and angles of light and it was fully intentional.”
“Do you feel different when you have to break the atmosphere to play your older songs?”
“No.”
I have a lot of questions about her past. So many. But I think she is about as likely to discuss that as she is to comment on the puce blob creeping up my neck, or the weather. It is no secret that Harvey doesn’t engage with her past, treating each new record as though it’s her first. And while for a fan who is consumed by her early work, this approach can at times be as frustrating, it really is the ultimate creative template. If nothing came before, there is nothing to fall back on and no chance she can repeat herself.
I raise this with her, pointing out that her approach bucks a trend of “looking back”. So many musicians are now, more than ever, reaching back to their earlier work, or touring classic albums. I wonder whether there will be a time that she could connect with her early material in meaningful way.
“I’m much more interested in the present; therefore I can’t answer your question about the future because I don’t know,” she says matter of factly. “But I am most invigorated by the present moment and what can be created in that, and it doesn’t serve my time well to go back looking at things that have already been done. I don’t need to, it’s done. I’d much rather create something new.”
I think about her response and her serious engaged eyes. She is one hundred per cent in this moment. It’s quite confronting, and strangely flattering.
“Would you ever consider expending more energy into your visual art?” I ask.
“Again I can’t answer that, because it is something that I don’t know. I just stick to something where it feels my strengths lie and what I feel most passionately about, and I follow that, and currently that is in songwriting and music.”
“Do you listen to music, especially contemporary music, when you are making an album so steeped in the past, like Let England Shake?”
“I try and keep very much with what is happening and I listen to a lot of music.”
“Is there anyone that you are taking inspiration from right now, at this point in your life?”
“Neil Young actually, I’ve almost exclusively wanted to listen to him for many months and I’m finding that is really nourishing me.”
For all her talk the present, I find her response bemusing.
“What led you to him?” I ask.
“I don’t know, I just followed my instinct”
From here our conversation spirals into something that feels as close to chit-chat as Harvey will ever get. We talk about the MONA museum she visited during the day (“breathtaking”), that night’s set and her stage props. But I avoid the past and the future, both of which she doesn’t feel comfortable in. I want more, but the heat is overwhelming us. We are both red in the face and she is due on stage in only a few hours. So I let her go, before our time is up.
As she stands to leave, Harvey asks: “Are you coming to the show tonight?”
“Yes,” I reply.
Standing a few metres apart we stare at each other. Suspended in a strange moment not dissimilar to the final seconds of a first date, when both parties try to gauge if it was “as good for you as it was for me”.
“Good” she beams, before gaiting out of the room.
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