MELANIE

Rip It Up, Issue 4, 1 September 1977, Page 3

MELANIE

Alastair Dougal

Melanie, in person, is a far more attractive proposition than her album covers might suggest. The flashing brown eyes and her face surrounded by glossy brown hair you might expect, but she’s dressed kind of flashily. She wears a long dress, natch, but she's also got a silver shawl that sets off her dark, mature beauty rather nicely. She’s 29 now and the mother of two children, so a flow er-child she’s not.

However, for many years she was saddled with an image that represented only one aspect of her character. She frankly admits: “I was over-sold and over-packaged. I don’t know if I should say that they shouldn’t do it that way, but I don't; think it worked for me.’’ As Melanie views it the promotion she received pegged her as a ‘twit’. “I didn’t want to be invalidated by the media just because they say I’m too

cute. I’m not a twit! I wrote a song that said: ‘there’s a part of us that’s eternal’, but that was a valid sentiment that applied to the part of everybody that I was directing the song to.”

Melanie has also come under criticism for her audiences. Critics have sneered at an audience who lit candles, brought her gifts and were generally regarded as ‘too- adoring'. Melanie sees it quite differently. ‘‘l’ve never had an audience I didn't like. Some people said they were too adoring, but I just felt they were with me. I don’t do my shows for me, I do it for them and I do it so that they get the best. There’s no magic if there’s no feedback.” Her last visit to New Zealand was her first breakout from a self-imposed isolation of over two years. After her tour here, she recorded her latest album, Photograph, under the direction of Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic records. The LP got consistently good reviews for being a taste of a more forceful Melanie. ‘‘Sure, Photograph is punchier but it’s not that different. There were rock songs on my first album, but it’s just that now I have to really hit people hard before they’ll bother to listen to me. It seems I needed the time away for people to be able to approach me honestly without misconceptions.” Unfortunately, Melanie’s new-found artistic confidence on record, does not come across so well on stage. She’s got the material to put on a really good show and she had a fine band behind her but, on the night of her Auckland concert, the pacing of the show was lamentable. Every time the show threatened to take off, she’d perform several slow songs that tended to put everyone off to sleep. The new songs were, however, undoubtedly the most Successful, notably “Groundhog Day” and Jesse Winchester’s ‘‘Yankee Man”. And yes, in reply to consistent requests, she did play ‘‘Alexander Beetle”.