Sarah McLachlan isn't just another multi-platinum singer-songwriter;
she's the brains and beauty behind the year's biggest musical event,
Lilith Fair
By Gary Graff
SARAH MCLACHLAN works hard for the money. A multi-million seller with her last
album, 1994's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, the Canadian songstress has spent the
first half of 1997 in a whirlwind of activity. She emerged from an eight-month
writer's block to record a new album, the appropriately titled Surfacing.
She planned the first full-scale Lilith Fair tour, a girlie goddess fest (or,
as McLachlan jokingly refers to it, Vulvapalooza) that will caravan many of
pop's top female performers--including Jewel, Sheryl Crow, Fiona Apple, and
Joan Osborne--across North America through August. She even got married (to
drummer Ash Sood) and gave herself a makeover, trimming her flowing, dark brown
locks down to a perky bob with streaked highlights. And now she's on her tour
bus, chatting via cellular phone as she pulls into the Shoreline Amphitheater
near San Francisco for a soundcheck. McLachlan isn't just Surfacing; she's
practically walking on water.
Is the Lilith Fair the result of the trial-run gigs you did last summer, or did you know you were going
to do it anyway?
We knew we wanted to do it before last summer. We did those shows to work out a
lot of the logistical stuff, to see how much work it would involve to do a full
tour of that scale. Definitely the energy and the vibe that existed in those
shows was really fantastic and--I don't think I had any doubts, anyway-
certainly solidified that we definitely wanted to do it this year, full-scale.
Is it too simplistic to say that the Lilith Fair is a reaction to last year's
metal-heavy Lollapalooza lineup?
I think that's pretty limiting. [Lilith is] not necessarily reactionary, but it
is an alternative to the summer festivals out there that aren't really offering
many female acts. I just felt there was an awful lot of great music that was
done by women that wasn't being heard, or it was being heard, yet there was no
festival representation. So I thought, "Wouldn't it be great if there was a
festival that was all women?"
How did you pick the performers for the Lilith Fair?
We basically just had a big wish list and pooled our ideas together and started
phoning everybody up. We gave every artist the opportunity to come onto the
bill for however long they wanted to and wherever they wanted to, which kind of
offered up a logistical nightmare for my manager and for my agents. But at the
same time we wanted the bill to sort of define itself, to let things fall where
they would fall and wherever people would want to come on, they could. The
artists themselves basically dictated what the bill ended up being.
Are there people who weren't available that you would have liked to have?
There's a couple performers I really wanted to have, but I definitely want to
see Lilith have some longevity, and there's always next year and the year after
that. Sin嶧d O'Connor was a very important one we didn't get. Neneh Cherry, she
was on and then her American record company decided they weren't going to
release the record, so she had no tour support. Tori Amos was another one I
would have loved to have gotten. Joni Mitchell, Annie Lennox--I'm aiming real
high here now.
How do the guys on the tour feel about being around all these women and all
this woman-thought?
They're loving it. I think most musicians don't even think along gender lines.
Most fans, too; they just listen to a song, and their first reaction is not
whether it's a man or a woman singing but whether it's a good song. I think all
the musicians up there, men and women alike, are really digging this. I see
nothing but smiles on everybody's faces.
Any good anecdotes so far?
Nothing I can share in the media! [Laughs.] I had a wicked conversation with
Paula Cole about ex-boyfriends, but nothing I want to get into in a public
forum. I played hacky sack with Tracy Chapman the other day; we're both pretty
mediocre. Neither of us have played it for a long time.
What were you going for on Surfacing?
As a whole, the record is a lot simpler, certainly in the sense of spontaneity.
It's quite different from last time--less production. The songs are more about
moments in time, and lyrically just simple--simple and more direct, less hiding
behind veils or walls.
It feels like you dug a lot deeper into yourself on these songs.
Oh yes, a lot more of that. That's been the process of writing for me every
time; I just get to go closer and closer, get deeper. For me, writing is very
cathartic and therapeutic. Generally, when I write it's because I need to
figure out things, a lot of asking questions. I had a lot of hard questions I
had to ask myself: What the hell I was doing. Who the hell I was in all of this
being famous, starting to become famous, and the whole music industry. It's a
very strange journey, but a pretty incredible one, too.
You had writer's block after the last tour, right?
Oh yeah. I felt completely spent, like I didn't know who I was or what I was
doing anything for anymore. And it took me a long time just to become whole
again, really. I tried to write songs and it was disastrous; I wasn't writing
from any place of honesty. I was trying to force it, because I had all this
pressure on me, or so I thought. It was mostly self-imposed: "Oh my God, you
haven't had a record in so long. You have to get right back in again." And I
had nothing to say. I was completely empty. I had to live again and fill the
well up.
So what did you do?
I just had a life. I made dinner. We got a dog. I stayed home. I reacquainted
myself with friends, just lived a kind of normal existence. I did my own
laundry. I gardened an awful lot.
What was the first song that finally came out?
"Angel" was the first one. It was great because for a long time I really
thought "This is it. I'm not going to write any more songs. There's nothing
left." But that was just because I didn't trust myself. I had to just sort of
let go and be patient, and it would come. And I wrote "Angel" in three hours,
most of it. I had been reading a Rolling Stone article on heroin in the music
industry. I felt such an empathy for that place that I felt a lot of people are
in--on the road, just feeling really lost. "Give me some distraction. Get me
out of this thing I'm feeling. I can't deal with this. I have no time to deal
with this." It's all about denial. I totally empathize with that place, and
that song just came out really easily.
Did you ever have experience with heroin?
I've never tried it. I think when I was younger I would have tried it if I had
the opportunity, but it never came up. I'm mortified, mortally afraid of
needles, so I don't think I ever could have put a needle in my arm. I
definitely had my share of drinking bouts, that's for sure. That was a number
of years ago, though.
A lot of these songs are sad and heavy, which seems ironic considering it was a
happy time in your life, when you and Ash were deciding to get married.
A lot of the songs are about really old patterns that happened and were re
-occurring long before I even met my husband. And what I did on a lot of this
record was start to deal with a lot of those patterns and start to break them
down. In some ways it was really incredible having that love and support behind
me. It made it easier to do that work. I think my love for him became a whole
lot stronger and I was able to love him more because I was able to start liking
myself again.
What was your wedding like?
Oh, we eloped to Jamaica. And it was beautiful--on this little beach pavilion
covered with flowers. We just had a little, quiet marriage ceremony and went
swimming a half hour later. It was fantastic, just the way I envisioned it. We
made a commitment to each other long before we got married, but I still have
some vestiges of traditionalism in me, so it was nice to do that. I definitely
feel a great security, but that's because of my love, not this little piece of
paper that I have.
So what's the deal with your new look?
What new look?
The haircut and everything . . .
I cut it off. What's the big deal? It wasn't anything, any big deal. I bleached
it so much last summer it was dead, so I cut it off. That's all.
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