Every single year, people make pilgrimage to the spot, it's such a sacred spot, very beautiful, nothing developed, just a field, there's a bronze plaque on a big monument, with the names of people who played there. I was there for the 20th and the 25th, it's always the same thing; the police try to stop people, but people come and set-up tents.
I like playing in big places, it's always more fun to play in small places, because people are more willing to eagerly leave the pub after a period, even have a few drinks, so they feel real comfortable, whereas you play in the big places--on their best behaviour. I really enjoy it, my music should be that way; really enjoying it.
I had hit records, I don't think I
was pure star material, my personality; I go to a party, I'm the
one who ends up in the corner talking to the quietest person in
the room, I'm just that kind of person, the hanging out--the gold stuff you
have to do, I wasn't that good at it, my husband made-up for it
in a lot of ways, but there's just so much a guy can do, so I
think, when I have hit records, it's a real shock to me, it wasn't
like my goal, when I first started out my goal was to join the
Peace Core, that was my thing, but they didn't want folks like
this in the Peace Core, so I ended up singing in Greenwich Village,
going to acting school, finding out how to express myself, then
I met my husband, who was a record producer, and we hit-it-off
right away.
In my real personal life, I like walking down the street having
nobody at all know or care, but not once I'm in an area where
I'm doing a show, people just don't put it together, also the
whole mock-up is a private, ordinary person.
For my profession, as far as getting places, having the show and
better sound and all that stuff, the more well known, the more
you're selling records, the more hype and more promotion; the
more people think you're good! It's like my little restaurant;
the more people enter the restaurant, the more people think it's
good. When you have a hit record, travelling is easier, people,
controllers, agents are nicer to you, but you know I don't live
for that!
This is as free as I've ever been, as far as doing what I want
to do. I don't think it's ever been this way. I have a real strong
sense of myself, my style, or whatever, personal vis of what I
am, but, when you're constantly counselling people who connect
with it, you're wondering what are you doing? So I did a little
bit wondering, and now I feel very 'Oh yea, of 'course, right
that's what I'm in'. I feel like this is it, this is really
my time, it strikes me funny when people come up to me and say
"You're just as good as you used to be, terrific" and
I think, 'Are you kidding? I'm so much better than I used to be.
It's not even close."
I'm getting myself back into this country, Because I have been in Europe, now in Europe I'm really well known, people do come up to me in the street, it's been happening over there, I had a hit record on a big label, but here I don't want to be on a big label, they want you for too long, I like to go off without more than one kind of album a year, I like to do what I want , I don't have mom and Dave and whatever, you can't do that because it's not triple-A enough, and all the different fish and the marketing, they could never figure out where to put me.
I usually do a cross, section, I don't usually do all the hits, I might throw one hit, the whole reason to do this; to have a thing happen to the audience; the people in front of you, that is the whole reason, I don't sit by myself and get off on my own, I really don't, I know many people do.
Q: I read in some 70s interviews where you talked about people just wanting to hear the old songs over and over again.
A: They weren't even that old… There's a difference between those hit records and me now, it's nice to have a song where people say 'oh, that's Melanie's song' or 'hear is some muzak' or something.
Q: There was such feeling in songs like, "I'm Back In Town" and "Any Guy", where did those come from?
A: From being jilted a lot in a very short period of time! (Laugh). Drawn from truth, it just takes one bastard, and you can draw from that, the rest of your life, you really don't need a whole lot of them.
Q: "What Have They Done To My Song, Ma", were they changing your song in the other room?
A:
Peter was the producer, I wasn't an accomplished musician, I used
to express myself in things like, "I want the song to be
less fast", I didn't even know to say it wasn't the tempo,
but the pattern that is too busy that made it feel fast, I didn't
even know that term, how to talk to musicians, so I had to leave
it to others to translate what I was wanting and most times it
didn't get translated, and that-was-that, so most times I was
frustrated in the studio.
That's why for years and years I performed all by myself. I think
when I was by myself, I just played the chords, I would have my
dynamics, my tempo.
I would embellish this in my head, I was hearing the strings,
the drums and everything, but I was implying it on the guitar,
I was hoping that everybody was getting everything I was hearing,
but I think I was hoping too much.
I wanted to have other musicians with me, but I wasn't feeling
good at communicating with them, about what I wanted. There's
so many great musicians now because the 'acoustic music thing'
is so much bigger than it was when I was starting out, it wasn't
a music that was taken seriously at all by the industry, 'can
we put a groove to it, can we have a hook', even the folky things
that became hits were done with a full rock band. I think I heard
my songs more pure, more orchestrated,
rather than with a group.
I'm on so many different labels, and some of my hits were even
on my own label that went bust, there's
very little that has ever been continuously promoted about me,
though I've never stopped working. People say why don't I take
a little vacation? No…I've been non-stop working.
You don't have a PR company, you don't have a whole business thing
going, you don't have the record company sending your records
to all the radio stations, so people think 'what happened to her?'
Well, I have been working a lot in Europe, I do have a major label
in Europe, and they do promote sometimes, I never know when, or
when they'll want me.
For so many of the artists on big labels, the label has a vested
interest in their artist, so they keep promoting to the stations,
but nobody's servicing me to those stations, so if people remember,
it's just 'cause they remember.
I
was lucky because Peter was always the person who negotiated the
contracts, a lot of people have said that he negotiated a little
too good, because they couldn't take quite as much advantage of
me as they would have liked to, so they didn't like me very much,
a lot of those corporate record companies that I was with, didn't
like that I could get out of their contracts so easily. Steve
Miller wasn't so lucky, twelve years down-the-road, he signed
a lifetime rich-and-famous contract. A lot of people you didn't
hear from anymore, because they were locked into these deals,
and I wasn't. Every major label, they can't figure out how come
they don't own anything, and they don't, I own my stuff.
There's a lot of bootleg stuff on me, I had a record out, that
I never put out, it was "La Bamba", I recorded it when
I was on Arista with Clive Davis, I don't know how this tape came
out, but I recorded a version of "La Bamba", in a studio,
that we never mixed, never finished, we never released, it came
out in Italy, and it was a Number One record, somebody sent it
to me, I wouldn't have believed it, because I went to Italy, and
having knowing I had a hit record, I would do "La Bamba",
but I didn't know, so I'm singing all these songs that nobody
ever heard of, but I didn't know, I found out later.
During the eighties, it was like a wall came down, and anyone
who was at Woodstock, or had the vibe of 'organic', 'acoustic',
anything to do with that, everybody was dead, it was like there
was a war, and we lost, it wasn't defined, no one knew where it
took place, but there was a powers-that-be feeling of the wall
is down, no more of that stuff. And now onto selling cocaine,
it's the eighties, the dance, studio 54, all blitzie, and everybody
was doing dance rivers and punk, new-wave, even Neil Young was
giving his blitzie new-wave thing with punk band.
Everybody was coming over to me and saying, "Melanie, it's
time to grow-up, you have to cross the line, put that guitar down,
cut your hair, make the transition from flower child to earth-mother,
grow-up and wear something else, something with the Manchester
look, "here she is; like a funky chic playing, very natural".
Everybody had gone nuts, it was a very hard time to continue,
there was something in me saying people didn't change, some things
change; but it isn't people, people still are the same common
denominator, I get up in front of an audience, maybe they would
be dressed differently, but we connect. People would be surprised
they liked me, "Wow, you're gorgeous, even though you are
a relic of the sixties". It was very much like that. There
was a written policy on one of the major labels, not to sign anybody
over 30. A very strange time to be me.
Q: The Internet?
A: I have to start all that, I'm going to, it's very new and exciting
because you can be independent a lot easier now with that connection,
so I am definitely gonna.
Both my daughters sing, they've sang since they were little; now they're bigger; they come around with me, but my eldest daughter is having a baby. My son comes with me now, he's just starting.
Jeordie
Q: What's it like for you singing with Melanie, you actually look
like you enjoy it, you look like you're in love with…
A: How could you not enjoy it, I mean it's so much fun, it's fun,
it's fun! We've done big and small festivals, small shows and
big theatres, I actually like the smaller shows, because this
way it's kind of like you really feel like you know the people
in the room, I think, also, people get more of what she's saying,
but, it's really nice to reach a bunch of people at the same time.
In Europe it's all big festivals during the summer time when they
have all their big shows.
Q: What is that magic that makes Melanie connect with people?
A: I think it's the ability to communicate what she really feels
across to people through the words and music, a lot of people
have some pretty good ideas of pretty nice experiences that other
people can associate with, but at the same time, you can't always
have the ability to get exactly what you want to say down, it
gets lost, that's why I think she's incredible doing it, that
way, it's like Wow!!
Q: What about your own career?
A: Very soon I'm going to be recording, I did a CD, "A Foreign
Film", with Leilah, and that went really well, but it's not
exactly what we wanted, but it's pretty good, but I only had one
song on that CD, that was my own, it's a really good great song.
I re-recorded "Hold on, one, two, three", nothing added
yet, we're gonna add stuff to it, but I want to do 3 or 4 more
songs and have a mini-CD.