6:00pm Thursday 8th July 2010
By Tim Hughes
TIM HUGHES chats to Suzanne Vega ahead of her gig in Oxford.
FEW artists have the staying power of Suzanne Vega.
It has been 38 years since a 12-year-old Suzanne made her first tentative steps in the music industry – taking to the stage, not at school or a church hall, but at New York’s Carnegie Hall with folk legend Pete Seeger.
Since that auspicious start she has barely been away, selling seven million records.
Now reinterpreting her extensive back catalogue with a series of new albums, she’s back on the road, with a tour which on Monday brings her back to Oxford.
But for all her multi-platinum and Grammy-winning success, she remains endearingly modest.
“I’m self-taught and primitive,” she tells me. “I make it up as I go along. As a teenager, I certainly never thought I’d become mainstream. I do feel more experienced and less nervous than I did in the beginning, but I still get excited when I see an audience. I love the feeling they know what they expect and I know what they want.
“And I like to treat them by giving them a new song.”
Born in Santa Monica, California, Suzanne grew up in an Hispanic area of New York, believing she was half-Puerto Rican.
When her Latino novelist father told her he was really her stepfather, and that her biological father was white and had not seen her since she was a baby, she developed something of an identity crisis.
As a teenager, she studied dance at the New York High School of the Performing Arts – the Fame school.
While listening to the music of Leonard Cohen and Lou Reed, she also taught herself to play the guitar and write songs. Her first trip to a gig – a Lou Reed show – made such an impression she abandoned her plans to become a dancer, opting to play her own songs in the student cafes and folk clubs of Greenwich Village.
Her observational style shines through in such classics as Tom’s Diner (written, trivia fans, about the same Manhattan restaurant frequented by Jerry Seinfeld and his buddies in the eponymous show), in introspective classics like Marlene on the Wall, or the groundbreaking Luka, written from the viewpoint of a child abuse victim.
“Sometimes while I’m walking, a melody starts going round in my head,” she says. “And when you’ve got a melody going round in your head, you’ve got a hit single – because it will be going round other people’s heads too.”
And, at the age of 50, she continues to be inspired by the world around her.
“I walk along with my daughter,” she says. “The things I’ve seen in my city, and in the world, are amazing, though sometimes horrifying. But I can try and shine a light on things and hope to change them.”
Gratifyingly, she confesses to being excited about tonight’s show at the Oxford O2 Academy – one of just two UK gigs at the end of an European tour.
“My last London show was a burst of joyful celebration, and I was sad to leave,” she says. “Though coming back to play in Oxford gives me another chance for a cream tea, which I neglected to have on the last trip.”
The show follows the release of eighth studio album Close Up, Vol 1, Love Songs, and follows a collaboration with folk giants Loudon Wainwright III and former Fairport Conventioner Richard Thompson.
“I recorded a TV show for the BBC with them both, which I really enjoyed,” she says. “Back when I was married to (record producer) Mitchell Froom he worked on a couple of Richard’s records, so we saw a lot of him in those days.
“The show went so well. I did a duet with Loudon, playing the part of his wife. The song was about not being able to sell his house and so the couple stays together, and it got a great response from the audience.
“Richard then played on Gypsy and the Queen and the Soldier. They also tried to sing backup in Frank and Ava but missed their cue and forgot the words!”
Suzanne, who is married to New York lawyer Paul Mills and lives with daughter Ruby in Upper Manhattan, admits she still gets excited at the prospect of playing live to audiences who know and love her songs. “It’s something that gives me a real buzz. It’s very gratifying, especially as I began in such a solitary way, with just my journal and guitar. I like what I do,” she adds. “And as long as there’s an audience, I’ll carry on doing it!”
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