November 22, 1997
Publication title: TV Guide, vol. -, Iss. -, pg. –
Place: Unknown
Writer: Kay West
Fair Play
The summer’s concert sensation, the all-female Lilith Fair, comes to television.
To a generation of Cheers regulars and Frasier fans, Lilith is the Ice Queen of Boston, the rigid onetime wife of Dr. Frasier Crane. But not to Sarah McLachlan. The Canadian singer had a very different figure in mind when she christened Lilith Fair, the epic all-female musical festival that premieres this week on pay-per-view.
In Hebraix legend, Lilith was the first woman-Adam’s original mate-who, depending on your source, either abandoned or was banished from the Garden of Eden after refusing to bow her husband’s will. McLachlan, 29, likes to believe that Lilith left under her own steam. “There are thousands of Lilith stories,” she says, “but basically what appealed to me was the idea that if you don’t treat me equally, I’m out of here. It semmed apropos for this festival.
And how. McLachlan’s creation, like its namesake, certainly stood up to the men. Lilith Fair’s rotating lineup of Jewel, Sheryl Crow, Joan Osborne, Cassandra Wilson, Fiona Apple, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and many others easily outdrew the summer’s established male-dominated rock tours, Lollapalooza and H.O.R.D.E. Over the course of seven weeks, 71 different femal acts performed under the Lilith Fair banner in 37 cities across the United States and Canada. McLachlan was the only constant, closing out the concert nearly every night. “Next Year,” she says, “I’m going to ask for the second-to-last spot on the bill. Who wants to follow Jewel?”
Actually, McLachlan has more than earned her headlining status. A native of Halifax, Nova Scotia, she began studying classical music at age 7 because that was the only kind of training available. As a teen, she joined a new-wave rock band called October Game and eventually signed a solo act with Nettwerk Records. Her american breakthrough didn’t come until the 1994 single “Possession” off her grammy-nominated album, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. Her fourth album, Surfacing, has stayed in the upper reaches of the pop charts for more than four months. We caught up with McLachlan backstage at Detroit’s Fox Theater, in the middle of a 34-city North American tour. After the incessant demands of shepherding Lilith Fair, she says, performing her own gigs “feels like paid vacation”.
McLachlan’s sororal concept was perceived in some quarters as a hostile act. “Throughout the tour,” she says, “we kept getting asked if we weren’t slamming men. That’s not it at all. This is about celebrating women in music.”
Because she organized the caravan, McLachlan was placed in the uncomfortable position of plaiyng host. “We are all kind of loners,” she says. “At the beginning of the tour, the aritists would arrive and sort of hide in their dressing rooms. And really, I’m pretty much of a social moron. But as the tour went, I warmed up to it and just started to knock on doors and say, ‘Hello, I’m Sarah, it’s great to meet you, and welcome to the tour.’ It didn’t get much further thant that until the Indigo Girls showed up. They just jumped right in there and said, ‘Hey, y’all come play with us! We want to play with you!’ We needed someone to mix it up, and they did that in a great way. Once that happened, everybody just kind of relaxed. Paula Cole and Lisa Loeb and I hung out together.”
The TV special was condensed from Lilith Fair dates in August in Toronto and Pittsburgh. It features performances by McLachlan, Crow, Jewel, the Indigo Girls, Shawn Colvin, and Meredith Brooks.
The week she spent on the tour couldn’t have come at a better time for Brooks, even if it was a little intimidating. “All my high school issues came flying up again,” she confesses. “I felt shy. I didn’t know anyone. I came on the tour late. I felt like everyone else had already made friends. I was the hard-rocker, they were the folkies. But it got over quickly. I was just having success [with the hit single “Bitch”], and I felt like they all reached out and supported me. I couldn’t talk to my friends because they just didn’t know, but the women on this tour had all been there. If you could picture these giant arms reaching out and holding you, that’s what it was like.”
The nurturing arms of Lilith Fair reached out beyond the insular world of rock & roll, into every community on the itinerary via sizeable donations to local women’s causes, from breast-cancer research to domestic-violence shelters. “I was the locky person who got to give the check in every city,” says McLachlan, grinning at the memory.
The teakettle in her candle-scented dressing room in Detroit has just come to a boil. Her dog, Rex, is curled up at her feet. Her husband-and drummer-Ashwin Sood (they eloped to Jamaica last February) has poked his head in the door. It’s a scene so cozy, it would probably even warm up Frasier’s Lilith.
