'cal me names' JOAN ARMATRADING

Rip It Up, Issue 74, 1 September 1983, Page 18

'cal me names' JOAN ARMATRADING

Maryan Street

Another Armatrading visit —that's two in i two i years! B This tour, billed as The Key Tour', has taken erXjflj round England, Europe,

Ireland, America, Canada, New Zealand r and 'Australia. It's no secret that Joan Armatrading is keen L to, make it in the States, so how did it go there?

"It was good." A non-committal, I-don't-want-to-be-drawn feel comes into her body language, but not her voice. She's not one to blow her own trumpet, even if she does play her own guitar. The Key has been the most successful of all her albums in America and 'Drop the] Pilot' made the charts. JHfcl "I don't think I've ever had a single in the charts there before, so that worked."

We edge round the question in other ways. Speaking about the introduction of American Val Garay to produce 'Drop the Pilot' and ’What Do Boys Dream', Joan says:

"I'd finished doing The Key and I'd written a whole lot more songs 'Drop the Pilot' was one of 'em - and wanted to do that |and thought in terms of a single. So that's all we were doing and Steve (Lillywhite, producer of Me, Myself, 1 ?/)lhad[gonejoff to work with another band so the record company came up with some different guys and Val was one of 'em. We met and worked and it worked and that was it.''

She had originally recorded 'What Do Boys Dream' with Lillywhite, then rearranged it and rerecorded it with Garay and different musicians. What is Garay's particular strength? "I dunno. Gets good sounds."

'Call Me Names' is out in Australia as a single, along with Drop the Pilot', but that's the record company's business not hers:

"I don't really do singles. I write songs and put them on the album." Last year when talking to RIU, Joan said she was beginning to compose songs using electric guitar. She wanted to make her songs more accessible, a bit simpler. She feels she's achieved that with The Key. Most of the tracks are composed on electric guitar, "apart from, 'Everybody's Gotta Know', which I wrote on the piano and 'Love My Baby' which was on synthesiser. Yeah, all the rest 'Telltale' was obviously acoustic guitar apart from that everything else was electric guitar." Well, how does the composition process work for her? "How do 1 write a song? It depends on the song. Some songs come like that, some songs you get the music first, some songs the lyrics first, some songs both together. "There's no set way I have of doin' it. What I try and do is be very prepared for going into the studio. So I do the demos and I do the arrangements on the demos so when people hear them there's a bass part, there's a guitar part, there's a synthesiser part all the bits are there on the demo. So it's very controlled, really. "At the same time I try and give people the freedom to be as good a musician as they are, so tha I don't sort of stifle them, y'kno' /, and say 'this is exactly how you have to play it'. Although they have all these things that they have to play and they have to stay within the arrangements I want -

but at the same time certain people like to do little passing notes and little fiddly bits and I just let them do the bits that they wan "Sometimes, even though it sounds the way you arranged it, it will sound different simply because it's different people doing it. Even when you do it all on your own it sounds different. It never is exactly as you hear it in your head."

What about backing musicians? Is there anyone she wants to use regularly? Only a shake of the head on that one:

"I haven't got anyone working with me that I've had since 1972."

What kind of emphasis can we expect on the next album? "It's hard to say. I think it'll stay pretty rock sounding I think. But again, it's difficult for me to say because some of the stuff I've been writing recently isn't like The Key— it's more like earlier stuff. So it's difficult] to know^^BHa

"I have to wait and see (laughs). Some of it seems to be going back lyrically and musically, but again, y'know, it depends on the songs I choose in the end. If, when I've written all the songs I've written a load of rock songs, a load of stuff that's like the old stuff and some reggae and I'm making the album and I sit back and say that one's obviously better than that one and it turns out to be all rockers then that's it. The last time I was writing like The Key all the time, whereas this time there's more sort of choice it could go anywhere now." And the shift in lyrics? Joan was a bit taken aback at the comment that the lyrics of 'Call Me Names' had been greeted with some antagonism by some of her followers, especially the women. "I don't know why. If they listened to the lyrics they'd realise they should be laughing their heads off."

What about those who don't think it's a joke? "Well they're idiots!" (Laughs)

Previously Joan had made her lyrics delightfully ambiguous but on The Key they're very much more heterosexual. Any reason for this?

"The point of that is when 1 used to write the songs before I'd always try to write the songs so that a. guy or .-girl can say what they want about the song. So that a guy could come up to me and say, 'Joan, this song means so-and-so' and the girl could come up and say exactly the same thing, which happens often. The thing about all the songs through all the albums is that they're not about me. " 'Rosie' isn't a heterosexual song it's obvious it's a guy in drag. I read in one review where the girl was saying that 'Rosie' was me confessing to going out with a transvestite. It was so stupid! (Laughs). Anyway, this time again the songs aren't about me but I've just decided to write 'he' or 'she' in the songs.. Again, it's not something that's going to continue, I don't think, 'cause a lot of the songs I've written recently are more like the other stuff again." Joan Armatrading past, present and possible future. Her concert at the : Logan Campbell Centre (packed out of course) was even better than before. One of its features was the rearrangements she'd done of old songs. Even the most seasoned Armatrading follower had difficulty recognising the opening bars of songs like Love and Affection', 'Show Some Emotion' and 'You Rope You Tie Me'. There was lots more action on stage too, with Joan and the band members in black and white.

Dynamic, developing and defying distinction and that seems to be how she goes down best.