October 23, 2008
Publication title: IAfrica.com, vol. -, Iss. -, pg. –
Place: Unknown
Writer: Unknown
Surfacing Again
Twenty years after releasing her debut album, Sarah McLachlan looks back at her career on ‘Closer’, the ethereal singer’s first best-of collection. In this interview she talks openly about her daughter India; her co-producer of 20 years standing, Pierre Marchand; the new material on the hits compilation and what it’s like to sell 10 million copies of one record.
Looking back over the course of your career, did you consciously set out to achieve certain goals? Or have things mostly “just happened” as you tried to make the best music you could at any given time?
I never have set goals, in the sense that I expected to be successful or get to a certain place. My idea of success has always been: ‘Does it feel right? Does it feel good to me? Do I enjoy doing it?’ and somehow miraculously, I’ve been able to follow that path and have a great success at it. So, this whole career, the life that I have, the opportunities that I’ve been given, it all comes as unexpected. Everyday I pinch myself; you know I can’t believe all this has happened to me.
After graduating from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, were you already on course to be a “lifer” in music? Or might your diverse artistic interests have taken you in another direction entirely?
Again, I just wanted to do something that was going to make me happy. I loved music and art equally, and I took a lot of private music lessons — guitar, piano, voice — and I was being pushed really hard into academics and I fought really hard against that. I had to do something after high school so, I went to the art college by default and I did really, really enjoy it and who knows, I might be a jewellery designer right now if it weren’t for being handed the golden egg at 19, when Nettwerk Records came and offered me a five record deal, kinda out of the blue. And I’ve never looked back. But I still draw all the time. I paint. I’ve always managed to incorporate my drawings into artwork for albums, album designs and things like that so I keep my fingers in that kind of thing.
‘Closer’ includes two songs, ‘Good Enough’ and ‘Possession’, from your 1993 album ‘Fumbling Towards Ecstasy’. This was your third album as a solo artist but the first to make the Billboard Top 50. At the time of its release, did you sense that you’d achieved a certain creative and/or commercial momentum and that ‘Fumbling Towards Ecstasy’ could be a breakthrough for you?
I never go into anything with these preconceived notions of this record is ‘the one’ that is going to be the success, that I never had before. I never think I’m going to be as successful as the last record and I think that is just setting my expectations reasonably so I’m not disappointed. With ‘Fumbling Towards Ecstasy’, gosh, I remember being $400 000 in debt, halfway through that record, thinking *laugh*: ‘Ok, the record company is going to send me home, because I’m just costing them so much money’ and then finally,you know, it sort of went over that hump. And you know more radio stations started playing it and you know I toured for I think 22 months on that record as well. So I really worked hard to really solidify a fan base, where I already on the other two records had played maybe five or six times. But that one was going back over, over and over to cities and every time it would be, 100 people, 300 people, 600 people. It was just a gentle growing thing, it didn’t happen overnight, it was slow and I’m so grateful for that, it wasn’t this big overnight success.
Another track on ‘Closer’ is ‘Building A Mystery’, from the 1997 album ‘Surfacing’. This disc ultimately sold over ten million copies in the US alone. What happens in the life of a respected singer/songwriter with a solid mid-level career when one album sells ten million copies?
Well, things change, but again, things change gradually. I, up until that point, had managed to live my career quite quietly. I wasn’t in the tabloids — I still am not for the most part, thankfully. And really it was with Lilith Fair, that was the thing I think that catapulted me into a different stratosphere as far as the media frenzy and public knowledge, that was one of the things that I really think helped it sell 10 million records. And again it was just all kind of overwhelming and it seemed like ‘OK, this feels right, I can manage this now’. Where as if that had happened six or seven years previous I don’t think I would have been anywhere near ready but because I got to, as I said, live my career quietly and have small successes and get used to things in that way, I think I was kind of ready for it.
‘I Will Remember You’ is taken from the live album ‘Mirrorball’ and was recorded during the 1999 Lilith Tour — a tour concept that you created. What are some of your fondest memories of the various Lilith Tours? What did you gain from the Lilith experience — both as an artist and as a businesswoman trying to raise money for charitable purposes through a concert tour?
Lilith Fair was fantastic on so many levels. We got to give a lot of money away to charity, in particular we donated a dollar of every ticket sale to a local women’s shelter, so that was upwards of $30 000 sometimes I was giving to a shelter in every city. But first and foremost it was the opportunity to play with so many amazing women and to hear them play and to just be part of this amazing, this revolving traveling circus that seemed to take on a life of its own. I was just really thankful to be a part of that.
You and co-producer Pierre Marchand have worked together for nearly 20 years, ever since your second album ‘Solace’. How did you meet and what made you “click?” What keeps your partnership fresh and interesting?
Pierre is one of my dearest friends, he is just a wonderful human being and a musical genius, I think. I met him when I was just 20, I just finished my first record and was looking for someone to take my music to a different direction. And I remember having lunch with him and my manager at the time sat down with him and asking him all these questions. ‘So you know, how do you think this music should go? And what kind of direction do you want to take it?’ and I remember Pierre saying: ‘I have no idea, we just have to get in there and start making music and see what happens’ and I was like: ‘Oh I like this guy and much to my manager’s chagrin I ended up going together and the rest is history. I pretty much work with him consistently and he never fails to come up with great musical ideas, he pushes me much further than I would on my own. And together we always, you know, I’ll take a song to a plateau, then he’ll take a song to another one and we just keep pushing it/pulling it until it feels right. It’s just worked out really well.
In 2003, you founded the Sarah McLachlan Music Outreach Program to provide free music education classes to inner city kids whose school music programs have been reduced or abolished by budget cuts. Is this program focused on a particular city or school system? What results have you seen since the inception of this program?
The Sarah McLachlan Music Outreach is a free music program for Vancouver’s inner city kids. We’ve partnered with six schools and we have over 200 children that are involved in the program right now. We teach guitar, piano, percussion, we have a junior choir, senior choir, there is a song-writing workshop, we have Garage Band — you know, Apple Computers — in there and it is just something I really, really wanted to do for a long time. You know I felt like I needed to give something back. I’ve received so many incredible opportunities, and gifts in my career and this just seemed like a really natural thing for me to do. I’m so thankful, we are six years in now and it’s just fantastic and I’d love to be able to grow the program. Up until now, I’ve for the most part funded it myself. We’re starting to look at outside donors to possibly grow the program. We just wanted to keep it small, so we could have control over it and really make it perfect or as good as it could be before we thought about going anywhere else with it. I tend to be a pretty big distraction when I show up at the schools, so I found I disrupt things a lot. I’m at all the recitals and have had a few opportunities, like when I brought the kids into the studio to sing on ‘Wintersong’, a John Lennon song, and the junior choir and senior choir. Actually I’m not a teacher — I have no patience — so I didn’t think I’d be good at that at all. I was quite nervous about it but, I was really trying to get the kids to sing this really really high part and I remembered my vocal teacher was telling me you know: ‘Stand up on your tippy-toes and think of this little string on the top of your head’ and I remembered just getting out there and being: ‘OK, I’ve got to get you guys going here and all the girls sing this high part and stand on your tippy-toes’ and I just felt this real rush of ‘I’m teaching! Wow! And they’re listening to me! And it’s working, it’s sounding better’, and it was quite amazing.’ In saying that, I think I’m going to sit back and let the professionals do their thing but brief moments of that were really fantastic, but I’m not a teacher. *laugh* I don’t have it in me.
‘Closer’ includes two brand-new songs, ‘U Want Me 2’ and ‘Don’t Give Up On Us’. Please tell us a bit about each song.
Well ‘U Want Me 2’ is that really confusing emotional place that at the end of a relationship, when you’re not really sure what’s happening, there’s no communication and there’s a bit of that push and pull and ‘Well I want you, but no I don’t want you and do you want me? No, you don’t want me’. It’s just that big ball of confusion really. ‘Don’t Give Up On Us’ is a little more hopeful. It’s basically speaking to someone who is lost to you or seems like they are lost to you and you are trying to get them back and saying: ‘Hey, I’m here for you, I want to be able to help you, you have to let me.’
What brought you back into the studio even while you were raising your daughter India and were pregnant with your second daughter, Taa-Jah (born in June 2008)?
I admit that it is probably the biggest distraction, having kids. And I’m really lucky in that I work hard for a number of years and I’m financially set up and I can take big chunks of time off now and I chose to have my kids a little later and it’s just great being a full-time mom. It does take me a long time to get songs written because it’s hard to find a balance. Usually what I used to do is just go away into the woods for six months and write my records and obviously I can’t do that anymore. So I have to find snippets of time and thankfully I have this studio here at the house. I can just nip down here for a couple hours everyday and I need it as well. For the first couple you don’t, you just want to be completely, well I did anyway, completely amerced in being a mom and my youngest is now 13 and a half months, and it felt like ‘I can definitely, I have something to say. I can definitely get back in the studio and take my time’. And of course my fans, I did a show a couple of weeks ago, and they were saying: ‘When is the new stuff coming out?, you’re killing us’ and I was like: ‘I had another kid, I’m sorry. It’s gonna take a while, but it is coming’ and there are two new songs on this record. It’s something.
Tell us what your fans can expect from ‘Closer’.
Well the songs are essentially either the singles or my favourite songs. It was tricky, putting them all together, but they are postcards, they are memories of wow. I listened to ‘Path of Thorns’ and it takes me back to the video, it takes me back to the time of life I was in and I think that is what music is for a lot of people — it just conjures up all these memories. And I just hope the fans will listen to it and it reminds them of other times in their lives and that song brings them to those other places. Hopefully good, maybe some bad, but you know, even bad times you look back and even you think: ‘Oh, I’m through that now, I feel much better.’ And you know there is a success there.
