August 24, 2023 • 55 mins
Sarah Jane Morris joins the Outhouse Lounge to talk about her new album, Sisterhood, which features 10 biographical songs about female performers who influenced her own career.
Sarah and host Chris Cordani talk about the album and some of these artists:
Kate Bush
Bessie Smith
Janis Joplin
Miriam Makeba
Billie Holliday and more
We also talk about Sarah's eclectic career from being discovered by Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox, singing with The Communards. The Republic, fronting a 25-piece band, writing a Miners' Anthem and spanning various world music genres
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OuthouseLounge Follow Chris on Twitter at @ChrisCordani1 Our website; outhouselounge.com
Sarah and host Chris Cordani talk about the album and some of these artists:
Kate Bush
Bessie Smith
Janis Joplin
Miriam Makeba
Billie Holliday and more
We also talk about Sarah's eclectic career from being discovered by Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox, singing with The Communards. The Republic, fronting a 25-piece band, writing a Miners' Anthem and spanning various world music genres
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OuthouseLounge Follow Chris on Twitter at @ChrisCordani1 Our website; outhouselounge.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Welcome to the Outhouse Lounge. Willwe relax and talk about stuff. I
really do need to change that tagline. Please subscribe, leave a comment,
or like us spread the word ifyou enjoy what we're doing in the lounge.
Here with me now is a ladywhose voice you have heard before quite
often. Possibly she was discovered byand sang with Dave Stewart and any letus
(00:29):
sang with the Communards the Republic createda minors anthem that we have to talk
about as a stellar solo career,and it can sing quite well with a
chillow accompaniment. She has a lothappening, including a new album, and
we're going to talk with that nowHere with Sarah Jane Morris, Welcome to
the Outhouse Lounge. Thank you verymuch. Nice to see you and be
(00:53):
in the house lounge. Enjoy it. I'm supporting the leisure suit today and
we're we're doing the full retro thingcollar going on there very good. As
you may know, I hoped toa show called Revenge of the Eighties radio
for fourteen years, so let's startthere. How did you capture the attention
(01:15):
of musical genius Dave Stewart and anylyrics well, it was a total accident.
I was is before I'd really starteda singing career. I was an
actress and I was about to goto the Edinburgh, the Edinburgh Festival to
do a three hander musical which hadbeen written about the scandalous book Hollywood Babylon,
(01:38):
which had just come out, andI was playing in this musical.
I was playing everything from Francis Farmersto Fatty Arbuckle to head a Hopper,
you name it, and myself anda guy called Mitch Binns who had written
it. We were singing in awine bar in Chalk Farm and it was
at a point where the tourists hadsplit up and the rhythmics had begun,
(02:01):
and Annie and Davi had taken overa church not far from from where this
wine bar was, and they camein for a break. They'd probably been
doing a really long session and theycame in and had a cocktail. Everybody
got talking and they needed some backingvocals and we're dealing with very low voices
(02:23):
here, but they didn't have anymoney and we needed we needed a day
in a studio to record the musicalthat we're taking to the Edinburgh Festival.
So it was the beginning of barteringand exchanged vocals for studio time and they
went on to have huge, huge, huge, huge success. On one
(02:45):
of my friends, Eddie Reader,she's a very good friend. She was
in the great eighties band Big Singlewas Perfect. She and I were in
a Garne and band together called Fufuand Light Soup in the early eighties and
(03:06):
she I can remember we were wewere doing this big concert together in Clapham,
Common, and then she said thatshe was just about to go and
start to become the backing vocalist forthe rhythmics, So that was another link.
And then another link with Annie particularlyis that my guitarist that I do
most of my co writing with,the wonderful Tony Remy. He was Annie
(03:30):
Lennx's guitarist for many years in hersolo career. So there are lots of
different links to that very very talentedcouple and quite a bit you quickly sang
with a band called The Republic afterthat, which was a mixture of a
bunch of genres. There was sogreat about the sixties through eighties. A
lot of these bands, they didn'talways get well known, but they mixed
(03:53):
a lot of different genres and around. So the Republic was. It was
an incredible band. It was anAfrican being Latin band looking nineteen eighty one,
long before they used the term worldmusic, and it was a ten
piece band. And the guy,some of the guys that set it up,
wanted a friend of mine who wasa black South African actor, John
(04:15):
match Keiser, to write the lyricsbecause he was a very good where his
dad was a famous writer and journalist, but he was very good with lyrics
and they were a political band,so they wanted him to write the lyrics
and be the singer. And hewas with the Royal Shakespeare Theater and he
said, I can't stay and bethe singer, So Sarah Jane, will
you come and be the singer andI'll write the lyrics. So that's how
(04:36):
it happened. You know. Iwasn't intended to be a singer. I
just was just doing helping a friendout. And we then got signed to
Charlie Gillett's label, Oval Records,who had had Lena Lovitch and oh gosh,
all sorts of other I've got afeeling Ia Jury was with Overlook at
(04:59):
some point, but before we wentto stiff, but anyway, I signed
with them. We did. Wewere the cover of the enemy, We
were the cover of city limits.We had a documentary made about us.
We were the band that was supposedto happen. We packed out all of
our concerts. But it was thetime of Thatcher, time of Thatcher's Britain,
(05:19):
and our politics just didn't rob.Our first single was about the Malvinus
War, where we said, don'tbelieve it's in your interest, and we
also did another song about the royalfamily. And of course radio one didn't
touch it. Capitol Records had juststarted and before it had established what kind
(05:42):
of radio station it was, itpicked up on us and we became you
know what, we were played.We were played, but actually the public,
the republic is the reason why Jimmyand I ended up by singing together
years later, because I and oneof the songs we did was a song
called My Spies where I sung ina kind of mock operatic voice and it
(06:06):
had this Middle Eastern dance beat.I mean, my voice was I'll give
you an example, my spies arein Pozzison around your hot. It was
that kind of voice and it becamevery big in the Gate Clubs and Jimmy
bought it, and Jimmy was convincedI was a man. And Richard Coles,
(06:27):
who became a very good friend ofmine because he was my brother's friend
at drama college three years before afterme same drama college. He used to
come to my concerts. He joinedthe tail end of Bronsky Beat and then
became the Communards with Jimmy and Jimmyand he were very involved with the Minus
Strike because Jimmy's best friend Mark Ashton, who they made the film Pride about
(06:54):
and who was a lot of ourpoliticization was a result of Mark Ashton.
But he got Jimmy involved and theywere doing as Bronsky Beat, doing many
minors benefits. And I with thiswonderful twenty five piece big band called The
Happy End. We did political musicfrom all over the world, twenty five
pieces in piece band. I justhad Peter Flarell, who's who, who
(07:19):
runs play and b that's a ninepiece band, sometimes a little more,
sometimes a little less. I understandthat's tough to manage, but think about
how how do you get everybody togetherand on the same page in a twenty
five piece band? Somehow it happened, and we did, we did.
We did the most wonderful political musicfrom around the world. And what happened
(07:39):
was at that point, when theminor strike was happening, we got together
with Kay Sutcliffe, who was aKent miner's wife. She wrote the lyrics
and then we recorded the song withthe melody and recorded it and it became
the anthem of the minor strike.So that was another link that Jimmy and
I had, was the fact thatwe were heavily involved with the minor strike.
(08:03):
And so Richard brought Jimmy along tosee me just just to basically say,
it looks she is. She's awoman, she's not a man,
and we you know, of courseI knew who he was. I'd been
a big, big fan of Bronskybeat and we got talking and we realized
it was a funny thing that Iwas this very tall, redheaded woman with
(08:24):
a very low voice and he wasthis petite, redheaded man with his incredibly
high voice, and we really clicked. And then the about a week later,
they'd been asked to do a Gazethe Word bookshop launch, which was
across the road to where I lived. I lived in Brixton, and it
was at the Fridge, which isa fantastic venue which I had opened with
(08:45):
the Happy End. We'd been theband that opened the venue, and we
went along. But then because theywere so busy. It was before mobile
phones, you know, you hadto actually get somebody on a phone to
make an agree an arrangement, andthey were busy mote in their first single,
You're My World, so they weren'taround much and managed to eventually get
(09:07):
hold of Jimmy to say, so, what is it that we're going to
sing together at the Fridge Because it'smy home territory. I had to make
sure I knew what I was doing, and he said I don't. We
haven't had time to think about that. And I said, well, I
think I know of a really interestingsong that the two of us could sing
and do it and it would itwould just have this double meaning we'd both
(09:28):
be singing about the same guy.I said, Billy Holiday's Lover a Man,
and they thought that was a greatidea. So Richard found the chords,
I wrote up the lyrics, broughtthem along to the gig. We'd
never performed it, and we getup there in front of a pact Fridge
for Gaze the word benefit and theLuckily the record company were in the audience.
(09:48):
They saw how the audience went crazy. I mean, we were very
camp couple, and we were makingit obvious we were singing about the same
guy. The audience went crazy,and suddenly I was asked if i'd go
to America to record the album withJimmy and Richard. And do you know
what? I was so naive becauseyou know, I've been involved in lots
(10:09):
of really interesting bands. I've neverreally made much money at it. You
don't when there's a twenty twenty fivepeople that you're sharing the profit with.
You know, you were lucky ifyou went away with more than twenty quid
a night. Well, I imaginethat because I'd been asked to go to
America, that I had to payfor my own flight, and I was
already looking into that and thinking,so how do I save that money up?
(10:33):
And of course, if a majorrecord company is going to take you
out to record an album, they'regoing to pay for that. But that's
how naive I was. Oh,look, you're a musician for all this
time, You're used to doing ityourself. A d I Y yeah.
And when the company says, hey, you've got to sing on this single,
I sing with the sing with theCommunards on this year, or go
toward this bad you don't realize,Hey, I don't have to pay my
(10:56):
own way anymore. I have todrive my own truck. It was to
the system. The song of yourvoice is forever enshrined in new way of
history as singing for the Communards onthe song I Don't Leave Me this word?
Yeah? Did you really when doingthe song? What were your thoughts
about it? Did you think itwas going to be timeless? Did you
(11:18):
think it was gonna be something thatthat was going to be surveyed decades later
as one of the favorite number onesof all time by British audiences. We
were staying in New York in thisopen plan apartment and Mike Thorne was the
producer. So Mike Thorne had producedJimmy all the way through Bronsky Beat,
(11:39):
He'd done the Soft Sell. Imean, Mike Thorne produced most of the
number ones in that period of theeighties. You know, he was just
the most fantastic producer. And helived in New York and he booked the
studio. What was amazing. Andwhat the thing I was terribly impressed by
was that Yoko Owner was in thenext studio. I mean, I thought
(12:00):
that was super cool. And anyway, so we when we're staying together in
the apartment, we haven't quite decidedall of the songs. They've written a
lot already, Jimmy and Richard,but what songs were we going to do
it? We knew Love a Manwas going to be one of them,
because that's what everybody gone crazy forthe two of us singing at the benefit,
and Jimmy was a huge disco fanand we were just sort of playing
(12:22):
music and he said, don't leaveme. This way is the one I
want to do, and so itwas just almost a spot as spontaneous thing.
But what helped, I think makeit made it make it that huge
hit. What a contrast we werein our looks and our voices. But
Mike Thorne had something called the Synclavia. It was the beginning of the Synclavia,
(12:46):
and we fed our voices into thisSynclavia, which was able to stretch
it so that you know, goingon and on. That was this machine
helping to stretch our voice for farlonger than we'd have been able to sing.
I want to clerk for this.For the young folks out there,
(13:07):
is not the same thing as autotune. This is for people who can
sing. We really did sing,but it made it far longer than we
could do, and I think werealized as we were doing it there was
something a bit magical about it.We came back to England. I went
straight off to do a tour ofIndia. I was supporting Ravishanka around India
(13:31):
with this great jazz band and MaxRoach was part of the tour and oh
gosh, I cut a yan Garbrick. You know, they were fantastic.
We're doing this tour of India.Then we came back and then we
were taking part in the Red WedgeTour, which was the tour to try
with the Labor Party trying to getthe youth vote. So it was Paul
(13:56):
Weller, it was juniors going,it was bragg, it was madness,
and it was the Communants and wethe Communants at that point were Jimmy Richards
and myself and a drum machine andthe tracks some of the tracks that one
would press a button and they wouldplay. Jimmy Richard was playing live and
(14:18):
we were singing live, but everyoneelse was sort of singing with their bands.
It was the time of Style Councilfor Paul Weller, and once again
it went down incredibly well. Youknow, we were a comical couple to
watch, but we also had thesereally good voices that bounced off each other.
And at the end of the concerts, everyone from you know, the
(14:43):
Smiths came and they guessed on acouple, you had the Specials, and
we all sung together. At theend, we all sung move On Up
the Curtis Mayfield track and we dida Dennis Edwards track and it was the
(15:03):
most fantastic experience. And I thinkwe knew on that tour that we were
onto something, especially with Don't LeaveMe This Way. And then we all
went off on tour. They puttogether an all female band and we went
off touring around the country. Thenwe went off to Europe. We did
(15:24):
an American tour, and we dida Canadian tour, and then I can
remember we were in Italy and Ithink we were playing in Venice and we
suddenly got this this message saying thatwe gone to number one. And that
was in September, in you know, nineteen eighty six. And we had
(15:46):
to be flown back to do Topthe Pops, because that's that's what sold
records in in those days, wasbeing yeah, exactly, and and honestly,
I'd grown up watching Top of thepot so I presumed it to be
this huge studio and it's actually onlya couple of stages, and it's a
matter of camera work and people getoff one stage quickly, and you just
(16:10):
think it's a huge place that it'sreally not. Anyway, we were at
number one for six weeks so byand at this at this period of Top
of the Pops, they weren't lettingpeople sing live. They had periods where
everybody could perform live, but thiswas one of those periods where you couldn't
and Jimmy and I could really sing, and I think it really annoyed us
(16:36):
that each week we were going backto sing on our number one single,
but we were miming, and soon the last time we did it,
what we did, I don't thinkwe even planned it. It just happened.
I the Jimmy started singing or mouthingwhen it was my voice, and
I did the same to hear soparents to the audience that we weren't actually
(17:03):
singing, and we were called upby the heads of the BBC and into
the office. And if you hadnot been at number one, that would
have been pulled. You don't.And there's something to be said though for
the lips sinking. And I knowthey're saying the big deal is, well,
(17:26):
you're not doing the note performing live. Well, think about this,
if you're trying to do live television, right, you're lips sinking or you're
not lip sticking. You're doing liveand some idiot who's never done sound for
you before screws that up. Thatmakes things worse now, it doesn't that
it's true. It's true. SoI know it's funny when people say,
well they're lip sticking blah blah,and and it is a good laugh to
(17:48):
say, well, they're not reallyperforming, but the I mean, that's
their song anyway, it still countsin my book. That's that's very true.
That's very true. But I thinkwe we I think we were just
bored of a not singing, right, I get that, But I like
the way you approached it. Thoughtit just to show them all up.
Yeah with me is Sarah Jane Morris, singer, extraordinaire. I can't even
(18:11):
tell you what genre is because they'rejust way too many. And let's get
into that because the new album,The Sisterhood, is coming out October sixth.
It's a celebration of some of thegreats who have preceded you and some
of your contemporaries, and I meansome are real contemporaries. But we're going
all the way from the early twentiethcentury to from the Bessie Smiths of the
(18:32):
world, all the way to AnnieLennox and Kate Bush, Janis Joplin,
Ricky Lee Jones, Miriam mccable,we'll talk about her too, Arita Franklin,
Nina Simone, Billie Holiday. Thisis a very group and again a
lot of them, not all KateBush, I would says, the main
outlier and all this, but alot of them have the same tone you
had as well for having. ShallI tell you how this came about,
(18:52):
so I think you should. Idon't have a television. I haven't had
a television for fourteen years. SoI read a lot and listened to the
radio. But I read a lot, and in the second lockdown, having
already worn my knee that was supposedto have been removed and replaced before the
(19:15):
first COVID lockdown, I you know, I was doing the walks trying to
stay fit, and I'd worn theknee down. So in the second lockdown,
I thought, well, what doI do to stay sane now?
So I said to my husband,I'd really like to know and learn about
the lives of the women that werethe backdrop to my career, the female
(19:38):
singer songwriters, because there's always themen that were in the books and not
the women. And I know thata they've allowed me to have the journey
I have because they came before.But also, you know, I love
their music. I want to findout what their lives were like. So
I ordered on Amazon biographies autobiographies,and I saturated myself in their music on
(20:03):
YouTube. Some of them had performanceson YouTube, but on the whole it
was just listening to their music andreading books about them. I fell in
love with their life stories and thosepeople. They were incredible women, and
some four are still living. Fourof these women are still living, and
four of the four that are stillliving are also having huge success, you
(20:27):
know, into the later part oftheir careers, which is incredible. But
the one. It was very hard, the point of, you know,
falling in love with all of this. I decided on ten singers, which
are the ones that you've mentioned.There are so many more that I could
have written about, but ten isthe right length for an album, and
I realized at this point I'd probablygot an album's worth of material. I
(20:51):
had very respectfully written their life stories. There's no gossip in there. I've
tried to write them as poetry andto that those singers have much respect I
pay them. And so once wewere allowed to be three meters apart.
My guitarist and co writer, TonyRemy, who, as I said,
(21:12):
has worked with Annie Lennox for years, but he was also the guitarist in
pee Wee Ellis's band from Jake theJames Brown fame, and also, oh
gosh, who's the bass player fromCream? I can't think of his name,
Jack Bruce. Don't don't worry,Sarah, do not worry because a
(21:36):
common theme on this program, andit's been called that old guys remembering stuff,
or twenty remembers stuff. So we'regood here. You're in a good
company. He was in Jack Bridgieanyway, Tony in the first lockdown,
had learned how to use logic recordingon his laptop, very handy for this.
(21:57):
He came and sat on my husband'sI sat opposite him. I bought
a decent microphone during lockdown because I'dbeen doing virtual concerts with my son who
had moved home during that COVID period, and he's a singer songwriter, so
I set up with my mic acrossfrom him. My brother is a photographer
but filmmaker. He set up behinda chair. We'd measured it all out.
(22:19):
We've got the three meters going.And as I was reading these lyrics
to Tony and explaining what I'd beendoing during this period, we both decided
at the same time that what wouldmake the project far better is if we
wrote the song in the musical genreof the artist the song was about.
(22:40):
And that made it a very interestingproject because it called on everything that Tony
and I had ever learned about music, had ever been involved with. You
know, we'd both been in SouthAfrican township brands. We'd both been in
Latin and soul and R and Bin a rock and jazz and folk.
We've done all of that during ourjourney. And because we decided that we
(23:07):
found that each song we wrote kindof wrote very very quickly. You know,
each time Tony would decide to puta different part of guitar part down
as the demo, I'd then comeup with a different backing vocal line or
a different melody, and we goteach song done within about an hour.
And the only reason we didn't actuallyend up by using that as the finished
(23:30):
product because it was pretty good.What we did was we live in a
converted shop which is on a streetcorner, and opposite us are the bins
for the entire area, and thebinman comes twice a day, and the
binman and everything that's related to emptyingbins ended up on my vocal microphone.
(23:52):
So it was just too distorted withrefuse to use it. So but we
did know that we were sitting ona very good project, and I also
knew at that point that it wasn'tjust an album that I mean, I've
written it now as a radio series, as a ten part fifteen minute radio
series about each of those singers,and I'm also writing it as a theater
(24:18):
music piece. And I'm also becausewe've documented every part of it, including
a trip to South South Africa,which I managed to fund through people pre
ordering the CD and various various thingsI did. We've got it all on
film, and so I also thinkit's a documentary. But these women that
(24:45):
I've chosen, and like I said, it's not everybody's choice, are extraordinary,
and several of them not only changedmusical history but changed political history,
one of them being Miriam McKay.But that you said he wanted to talk
to me about now Miriam is eventhough I never met her, I was
(25:07):
so fine wine here. Neither oneof us have met Miriam Quba. I
didn't mean I've worked with people thatworked with her, and I, like
I said, this first band Iwas in the Republic. The writer of
the lyrics was John Maskisa. Hewas a black South African actor and his
(25:29):
father. They'd come over as afamily in exile. His father wrote King
Kong the Musical, which is whatbrought Hugh Maskela and Miriam Mkaba to London
first of all. Okay, sothere's the first link. Then in the
mid eighties I joined artists against apartheid. Jerry Damas from the Specials, and
(25:52):
this friend of mine, Dali Tambo, set it up. Dal Dali Tambo
was the son of Oliver Tambo,who was the head of them. The
whole time that Nelson Mandela was inprison, Daly and his whole family were
also in exile in England. Daliand I became an item, so I
got very involved. I was theone with the megaphone outside South Africa house
(26:15):
every Friday singing Sicaelili Africa. Ithen met during the period of the minor
strike, I met this guy calledMervin Africa, who was a black South
African piano player who had played withMiriam and with Hugh. He lived in
Brixton and he and I started towrite together and he convinced me to become
(26:37):
a safe house. So he andI were the safe houses in Brixton for
South African musicians that were arriving inexile in London. So there's another link.
I supported you, Messecla along theway. I covered one of you
Merscala's amazing songs couldtrane on my albumBloody Rain, which is decated to Africa,
(27:00):
So I think everything goes back toAfrica. But when we were in
artist Gainstoparteite, we managed to connectwith Harry Belifonte and he came and he
became the voice and the face tothe press for US. Harry Belifonte took
Miriam Macaber to America and he helpedher become the most celebrated African artist in
(27:26):
America. He helped politicize her bywhen she was opening up for his concerts
by telling her to say to theaudience, I am not free until my
people are free. He took heralong to the United Nations so she understood
how it worked. He helped writea speech for her that she delivered the
(27:48):
United Nations the second time. Itwas part of what convinced the United Nations
to boycott South Africa. That's huge, it is and if you had a
brush up on most as I didnot know much about her before this interview
as well. Miriamcaba's music was quiteupbeat, so she hit a lot of
pain and a lot of what shewas trying to fight for behind the music.
(28:10):
But that that upbeat, celebratory soundmade her able to tell Americans and
tell Europeans what's really going on overthere, and that captured the attention of
the leadership of all those nations.Plus, of course, the U went
at the time by living every Africannation except South Africa. And you know,
(28:33):
she she was extraordinary. She wasvery petite with this incredible voice.
Incredible voice. But thanks to HarryBelafonte, you know, he was an
extraordinary man and a very generous thingto do. And you know he was
doing that kind of thing right tothe very end, wasn't he. You
know, I would say he was. And it took a lot of help.
(28:55):
Also down in South Africa there werea lot of the newsmakers, made
a lot of new the bet there'sbeen two twos of the world, and
of course Nelson Mandela Winnie as well. But but the one who kind of
was able to bridge the gap betweenthe regular person and the music, the
person who just wanted to be entertained, who didn't know what was going on
around the world, and the worldleaders got them all together to notice what
(29:19):
school was going on down in SouthAfrica. Absolutely, and she I mean
at one point when she got divorcedfrom New Masscla, she married Stokely Carmichael.
I mean, that's a very politicalmove, is it not. The
head of the Black Panthers. Iguess I'd say if she liked them,
she liked them, That's all Ican It was sing and of course as
(29:41):
a result, the FBI were onher case. You know, they were
a little nervous about her at thisstage and her her career. But she
is She's a unique artist. Andwhen I wanted to when I had written
her song, and I wrote awhole part Cosa, which was her language,
(30:02):
and rather than send the files ofthe tracks that we'd recorded to South
Africa for the Seweto Gospel Choir tosing that Cosa, I thought, do
you know what, I've never beento South Africa. I was signed to
a South African label, Jive Records, back in the eighties. I spent
a thousand pounds extra on my contractto make sure I didn't sell in South
(30:22):
Africa. Of course, everybody askedme during that period to go, and
I didn't. Nobody asked me sinceand I thought at that time I was
about to turn sixty three, andI thought, I'm never going to go
unless I go now. And soI set up a gofund me and I
asked fans to pre order this CD, and enough money came in to allow
(30:45):
myself, Tony who had written songwith, plus my brother Rod of the
filmmaker, to go to Johannesburg.But by the month time the money came
into my account, the flights haddoubled. I did not have enough money
for our accommodation. But anyone stayedto you guys, oh we're not going
now. So what I did wasI contacted Dali, having not seen him
(31:07):
since nineteen eighty seven. I trackedhim down in Johannesburg and he and his
wonderful wife Rachel answered the phone.He had four children, he lives just
by the zoo. I told himall about the project, and I said,
did he know anyone any of hisfriends that would like myself and Tony
to come and do a private concertin their home? But they put us
(31:29):
up for three nights, the threeof us, and he turned around and
he said, now you're going tobe my guests. You're my friend.
So we arrived in Tambo Airport,which was named after his father, and
we stayed with the Tambo's and hedrove us to record with the Seweto Gospel
Choir in Seweto on the day thatMiriam would have turned ninety. It had
(31:52):
the most wonderful karma to this.I also knew that I needed to go
to Cape Town, having come thisbar because I wanted for part of our
film and also to play keyboards onthis track Mervin Africa. I knew he
was back in Cape Town. Hewas part of you know, me being
being a safe house and he playedwith Miriam and with Hugh. So I
(32:14):
tracked him down, but I didn'thave that money to change the flights all
for our accommodation. And I rememberedthat years before I'd been contacted by someone
from Italy who lived in Cape Town, because Italy is a big market for
me, asking me if i'd goand do a concert. Now. The
concert never happened, but I rememberthinking, I wonder how to track down
(32:37):
that person, and I wonder whattheir connection was with Cape Town. And
it took me quite a long timeto go through emails, and I eventually
got hold of this woman, GiovannaSatur, and I texted her and I
said, what was your connection withCape Town? And she said, oh,
my husband and I had a hotelhere. We've just sold it because
(32:57):
this is a you know, theCOVID period has destroyed the tourism. And
they were on a safari and shesaid why and I explained about the project
and that I needed somewhere for uscheap, for us to stay in South
Africa in Capetown. She got backto me the next day and she said,
right, well, I've spoken tothe people I sold the hotel to.
(33:17):
They're Italian, they're big fans ofyours. They're going to let you
stay there really cheaply, all threeof you. And she told me how
much it would be, and Isaid, well, that's fantastic, but
I don't even have that money.Do you think I could do a pop
up concert? Even though I've neverbeen to Capetown before. People aren't going
to necessarily know who I am.She got me this is someone that has
no connection with the music industry whatsoever. She got me on to Capetown Radio,
(33:43):
the main radio station. She gotme into at Capetown TV. She
talked to me the next day andsaid, right, I found a venue.
A found a venue. They don'tnormally do don't normally charge on the
door, but they understand what thisproject's about. They don't have a PA.
So tell me what it is youneed me to hire in. How
much money do you need for theentire the rest of the trick and to
(34:07):
change the flights and accommodation of food. And I knew my brother who's the
filmmaker, needed an extra week outin South Africa. You can't go that
far as an artist and not wantto capture as much as you can.
So I told her how much wasneeded to hire a guitar for Tony,
this and the other. She soldout the concert to the Italian community in
Cape Town because I'm big in Italyand they couldn't believe that I was there
(34:30):
on their doorstep. Once again,it raised all the money we needed.
It was wonderful karma. It allworks out in the end. Do you
dare to put it out into theether? You know, and your intentions
are good and mine work, itcan work out, you know. So
(34:51):
that was a big part of thealbum for Tony and I, you know,
it was the highlight really And we'vemade a video now using the Seeta
Gospel Choir and myself and that timefour Miriam's song, and we're hoping to
release it in South Africa because that'swhere it belongs. We've got to hear
it here too. Sarah Jane Morrisis with me on the Outhouse Lounge,
(35:14):
or should I say in the Outhouselounge. Either way it works. The
album is called The Sisterhood. We'retalking about ten women that heavily influenced her,
and she wrote albums sort of alittle biographical song for each of them,
one of them. And again,I don't know if I can focus
on everybody, but I do wantto go back to the turn of the
century, turn of the twentieth century, that is, from the nineteenth to
(35:35):
twentieth. We're going to Bessie Smith. She's the back, she's the epitome
of Saint Louis Blows, but alsoto the song Saint Louis Blows. And
yes, was in a movie calledSaint Louis Blows. There we go.
So it's everything in that respect.But that's way back. And I know
you, I know you're quite astute in the music industry. What turns
you on to Bessie Smith? Sowhat originally took me to Bessie was when
(36:01):
I was at drama school because Iwas training to be an actress. I
my dad was in prison. Okay, so I come from a big family.
I've got six brothers and he wasin a top security prison actually at
this point. And I was thatstudent, that drama student with the huge
chip on the shoulder and we didan in house production. Now I was
(36:25):
there was some pretty formidable people.I was there with Christian Scott Thomas,
Julian Sands, Rupa Everett, Frenchand Saunders who were well. Jennifer Saunders
was the person behind Oh Goshna,I'm sure it's huge in America too,
(36:46):
the TV series that's absolutely fabulous.Did that happen in America? Yes,
it's right there behind the young onethat's the black yea or Saunders and and
Dn French were also at Central withme. So we did an in house
(37:07):
production and the person presenting it wasJulie and Sands, but then Triliquos Stummy
was Rupert Everett's. French and Saundersdid their first circus act. I became
obsessed with prison songs because I hada dad in prison. That took me
to Bessie Smith in my research andI found her incredible. And the reason
(37:31):
I start with Bessie is she putblues on the map. It wasn't a
man, it was a woman.She put Columbia records on the map.
Did you have to spend first thefirst few years of her wife in prisoner
was her mother or something like that. What happened was she by the time
she was nine years old, herparents are dead. Her father was a
(37:54):
pastor. She was busking on streetcorners. Age nine, she got picked
up by Ma Rainey and Parini's vaudevillecircus. That's where she learned her the
art of vaudeville and singing. Shebecame bigger than Marrainy. She became so
big and so successful that she wasable because of being a segregation she wasn't
(38:19):
able to eat in a restaurant orstay in a in a hotel, So
she bought a Pullman train and asa result, her entire troop were able
to travel around America on this Pullmantrain. But while they were traveling,
they had the clue Klux Klan sortof firing at them as they were traveling.
You know, there were many bulletholes in that train. And she
(38:44):
she was extraordinary, an extraordinary woman. There's very little footage this bit that
you're showing. Now, that's almostall that there is a Bessie, but
she paved the way for all ofthe rest that came. And she she
married the bastard husband, even thoughmost of her relationships were with with women.
(39:07):
She adopted one of her dancers,one of her lover dancers sons.
When this person was dying her thehusband was using all of her money.
She only really managed married to himbecause he was her manager. He used
all her money to put, youknow, put it into another vaudevillian singer
(39:30):
that he was in love with,and when she was no longer when they
had divorced and she was no longergiving him money, he blackmailed her by
taking the child. She never eversaw that child again. Lord only knows
what happened to it, but probablywent to a home this boy. Anyway,
(39:51):
she had to re she had tototally recreate herself, because you had
the depression and the music that bythe time people were buying records again,
it was no longer that kind ofblues was Billy Holiday. She paved the
way for Lady Day and so shea bit like me with the communis,
(40:13):
having been, you know, havinga number one nearly all over the world
and traveling in style, I decidedI didn't want that kind of career and
I took a very different line.So I was back in the back of
a van traveling like that, andit was almost like that for Bessie from
being you know, the most famousblues singer that there was, to having
to travel in her her old percardwith the other musicians to go down Route
(40:38):
sixty one or sixty six to herconcerts. And one day a biscuit lorry
drove into her severed her arm.She died, but she died a pauper
because he'd taken all the money.And she was in an unmarked grave.
And thirty three years later, hermaid heard that Janice Joplin was talking about
(41:04):
how influenced she was by Bessie Smith, and she went to Janice and she
said, did you know she's inan unmarked grave? And Janice and she
paid for the gravestone. Janice Joplindied that year. So they're all linked.
They are all somehow linked, theseincredible singers. And of course another
(41:27):
influence you was sang about on youralbum The Sister Hot. Yes. Well,
an interesting story about Janice is she'scropped up many times in my life.
The first time was I My firstTV series that I was in as
an actress, was directed by AntoniaBird, and she went on to,
(41:52):
you know, to make movies.But at this point she'd come from the
Workhoff Theater and she was doing thispolitical I think it was a five or
six part series for the BBC aboutthe docklands crisis, and I played an
an investigative journalist on the radio andI was murdered, but I was sleeping
with so many people, so therewere so many people that could have murdered
(42:14):
me. And that was this firstseries. She was very political. She
and I really got on, andshe asked me to write the music for
her second TV series called The Men'sRoom with Bill Nigh and many other great
actors, and she and I remainedfriends. She did a film called Priest,
which won all sorts of awards.Everything was very political and about what
(42:36):
was going on with Antonia Bird.She went to LA and she contacted me
late one night and she said,Sarah, you've got to write your life
story. It's a film. AndI said, I can't write it.
My mum and dad are both stillalive. It's I said, but I
have just read this amazing book aboutJanice Duplin and I could play her.
(43:01):
Can you buy can you buy thestory? She went ahead, she went
and read it. She tried tobuy it because she decided yet she was
right I could play her, andJanie's sister just at that point was wanting
to do the musical about Janice,and so I wasn't she wasn't allowed to
(43:22):
buy it, and that didn't happen. Okay, So that's the first time
I nearly play Janie. The secondtime was I was doing a whole week
of concerts at Ronnie Scott's, whichis it's the most famous jazz club in
Europe as a big, big history, and it was a place where Billy
Holiday and Sarah Ball and all sortsof people did actually play in London,
you know, So it's got thisamazing history. But in those days,
(43:45):
you did six nights a week,two shows a night. So I we're
talking a Sunday morning. I've justsung probably one hundred and fifty songs,
you know, that week. I'mvery tired, I'm dyslexic. I'm counting
the cash backstage, wanting to paythe band. This what seemed to be
(44:06):
a drunk American came back said saidthat I was the nearest thing to Janie
that he'd seen, and he toldme that he'd written this song for her,
and all I was thinking of,I've lost where I am with my
counting please go away and he andhe said that they were Paramount Movies were
making a film about her life andthat I should be seen for it.
And I remember thinking, oh,yeah, of course you wrote that song,
(44:30):
you know, because boy, hehappens a movie. You're going to
do the movie thar and then andthen and then I was also I'd forgotten
about the movie. I was justcounting the money. That week I read
this tiny little pop a piece inThe Guardian and it said something about this
movie that had it had cast MelissaEtheridge as Janice, and it said something
(44:52):
like she'd run off with the producer'swife. And I remember thinking, hey,
Janice would have run off with theproducer's wife. This is it citing.
This is interesting. So I gotmy acting agent to put me up
for the part. I learned Balland Shane, which you know, which
is associated with many of the bluesartists. I did Texan dialect lessons and
(45:15):
I was led to believe that thepart was mine, and someone at the
same time offered the part to BritneySpears. Now can you imagine this was
when that was twenty four years agoand Brittany Carton had been very old and
definitely wasn't right to play Jennie something. It got shelved, and it got
(45:38):
eventually got made years and years laterwith Redi's Elwiger, and I think it
went straight to DVD, which feltlike, you know a little bit.
It made me feel slightly better thanit went straight to DVD. I don't
know. I think some of thosemovies are so high class that they bypassed.
The theory is entirely in Go Streetand I never saw it. And
I'm sure Renie's Elwood. She wasa better choice than Britain for the part,
(46:00):
and she's a good actress. Butanyway, what I did, because
this film didn't happen at this point, I still got the script in my
covered. What I did was Iwrote a song about the experience because I
had banked a lot on this.In my head, I'd relocated to America.
You know, all of this washasposably happening. So the song I
(46:21):
wrote is called I've put All MyMoney on a Horse named Janice Choplin.
It's one of the best written.So that was the beginning of me starting
to pay homage. Years later,I did two albums with Mark Gribo to
Tom Waits's main side man. Youknow, in fact, responsible for so
much of the wonderful sound that is, you know that is associated with Tom
(46:44):
and he and I did two albumswhere we did just voicing guitar and one
of the things we covered was Toxicby Britney Spears. But enough Revenge,
you see, I hadn't gone thewhole way, and I sung it as
if I was had a heroin addictionrather than addiction to love. But that
(47:05):
felt like the closure. Well thereit goes all full circle right there once
again. But Janice, let metell you this. So what I discovered.
I'm sure you already know this,but we the rest of the world
didn't really know about Janis Joplin untilthe Summer of Love and the Monterey Pop
Festival nineteen sixty seven, the sametime as we discovered about Jimmie Hendricks.
(47:27):
She was dead three years and fourmonths after that. So everything we heard
about that incredible singer happened in thatshort time. That's shocking, isn't it.
She was very dominant in her fieldfor that short of a time.
But it is correct, and shewas It's a said story. There's a
lot of said stories around that time, and even today we lost a lot
(47:49):
of great artists young we certainly have, right, but again that's happened over
the centuries too, right. Ithink out of the lists that I've made,
the ones that you can hear theinfluence, really hear the influence of
my voices is Janis and Nina exactly. There the two that you can really
hear. I think it's a greatalbum. It's called The Sisterhood. I
can't go through everybody at this point. I do have a little bit of
(48:12):
time left, but I wanted totalk about one of your contemporaries because we
went to the earlier days of musicor recorded music. We got to the
sixties and some really good rock there. We're talking Janis Chaplin. But Kate
Bush, you're contemporary. It's againshe's kind of an Outlaiyer here because she's
more of a contemporary of yours asan influence and sings very differently from you
(48:34):
as a four active soprano. Yeah, they all actually sing totally differentially to
me, and I've not any ofthe songs tried to sound like them.
I am telling their life story asme. But with Kate, I mean
I can still. I can rememberbeing in the common room in the green
room in our drama college when WeatheringHeights first came out. Somebody played the
(48:57):
vinyl and and it was like,oh my god, what is that?
It was like, how how theworld also reacted to Freddie Mercury's voice.
They've never heard anything like it before, you know, it was like,
oh my gosh. And I lovedthe same with Annie Lennox. I loved
how Kate and Annie were. Itwas very obvious how influenced by David Bowie
(49:20):
they both were too, and thatwhole gender fluidity, you know, that
was all happening through them, justlike it was with David Bowie way back
there. That's terribly appropriate now.And and Kate, like Annie, really
used video to tell those stories,to tell the stories. You know,
they were both they are, butthey are both astonishing performers and the tellers
(49:45):
of stories. So with Kate,when I came to to want to research
her story, there's she's a veryprivate person. She always has been.
And she is the only one outof that whole list that had the white,
middle class bohemian lifestyle. You know, she was brought up in a
(50:07):
family you know, the equivalent ofa kind of erectory with parents that really
encouraged all the children to be ascreative as they could be. It was
so different to the other people's stories, and there aren't any well. I
didn't come across any really good booksthat told me about Kate, and I
didn't come across any interviews that reallytold me who she was. So I
(50:30):
thought, right, I'm going toabsorb myself in her music and her lyrics,
and I'm going to find out whoshe is through that. And when
I discovered that she wrote Man witha Child in his Eyes when she was
twelve years old, I thought,whoa a poet at twelve? I mean,
it's extraordinary. And I thought,so, how will she know how
(50:53):
much respect I am giving her?And my husband and I were talking about
this, and I didn't know thisfact. It was him that told me
that Rambo, the French poet whochanged in a way, changed French language
because he was so successful. Hewrote his poetry age fifteen. And I
(51:14):
thought, Okay, she grew upin the suburbs. I'm going to call
her Rambo of Suburbia. She willdefinitely know who Rambo is and she will
understand its connection, so I'm notthe storm character we're talking with. Not
that exactly what other people will think. So I then I tracked down a
(51:36):
homoerotic rambo poem and a friend ofmine who's in her seventies, she looks
like Piaff, she sounds like Piaff. I asked her as she would read
it, so we filmed her readingit. I had paid for the string
arrangement of for Nina simone song bya friend of mine. He also did
(51:57):
the journey one for the Nina one. It didn't work for myself and Tony,
but I paid quite a bit ofmoney and I couldn't afford not to
use it. So when I waswe were recording her song, I said
to the engineer, can we changethe key of this and can we reverse
it so that we can somehow useit in Kate's song? And we did,
and it starts off because you hearthese backward transpose strings with this wonderful
(52:25):
French voice at the opening, itsounds like you're going, you're you're You're
in a French noir film. Youknow it's And then I knew I had
to make the song as English aspossible because Kate Bush is so English and
and I also with every every oneof the these people's songs, I wanted
(52:47):
there to be lyrical and musical referencesto them. And so because she'd done
that duet with Peter Gabriel, whichwas just so moving, you know,
don't give up, And because shespends so long getting the most amazing sounds
in the studio, you know,she's a great producer and writer. I
(53:07):
used I used dig red I usedGeorge Harp, my ex husband who was
in the Pogues, who works withTom Waits and works with so many people.
He lives in America. I wantedto have him on there, you
know, and he is a phenomenaldig redo player, and Geawge's harp.
So we fiddled about with the sound, but we created what we think Kate
(53:29):
might have done had it been her, and we go into that kind of
whole dub section at the end whichreferences Peter Gabriel. We even tried to
come up with the bass of TonyLevin we were you know, we we
have all of that there, soyou know each song. If you're a
fan of any one of those singers, I don't think you'll be disappointed because
(53:52):
we have you know, we have. We've tried to deliver with not only
their life story, but with musicthat is representative of their journey. Sarah
Jane Morris once again. The albumis The Sisterhood. It's coming out October
sixth. If you want some moreinformation on Sarah Jane, check out her
(54:13):
website. And I believe it's SarahJane Morris dot COO dot UK. I
think I got that right. Howabout that you have? It used to
be dot com, but there's athere's a Hollywood actress called Sarah Jane Morris.
Yes, that doesn't help, itdoesn't. I decided to let her
have that one type of code dotUK. Well that's nice. I like
that. That's it's it's it's reallysporting of you, I'll say. Well,
(54:37):
she was incredibly popular as well.Jane. Thank you very much for
being out with us. Let's haveyou on again soon. I'm sorry we
couldn't get through all of the influences, but you can when you get the
album again out October six You canget them on all the digital outlets you
can find them. You can evenhold the CD if you can buy the
(54:58):
CD as well. Thanks again andStarry Chain Morris, thank you so much
and thank you for listening. Staycool and enjoy yourself and have fun in
the outhouse. Lad
Welcome to the Outhouse Lounge. Willwe relax and talk about stuff. I
really do need to change that tagline. Please subscribe, leave a comment,
or like us spread the word ifyou enjoy what we're doing in the lounge.
Here with me now is a ladywhose voice you have heard before quite
often. Possibly she was discovered byand sang with Dave Stewart and any letus
(00:29):
sang with the Communards the Republic createda minors anthem that we have to talk
about as a stellar solo career,and it can sing quite well with a
chillow accompaniment. She has a lothappening, including a new album, and
we're going to talk with that nowHere with Sarah Jane Morris, Welcome to
the Outhouse Lounge. Thank you verymuch. Nice to see you and be
(00:53):
in the house lounge. Enjoy it. I'm supporting the leisure suit today and
we're we're doing the full retro thingcollar going on there very good. As
you may know, I hoped toa show called Revenge of the Eighties radio
for fourteen years, so let's startthere. How did you capture the attention
(01:15):
of musical genius Dave Stewart and anylyrics well, it was a total accident.
I was is before I'd really starteda singing career. I was an
actress and I was about to goto the Edinburgh, the Edinburgh Festival to
do a three hander musical which hadbeen written about the scandalous book Hollywood Babylon,
(01:38):
which had just come out, andI was playing in this musical.
I was playing everything from Francis Farmersto Fatty Arbuckle to head a Hopper,
you name it, and myself anda guy called Mitch Binns who had written
it. We were singing in awine bar in Chalk Farm and it was
at a point where the tourists hadsplit up and the rhythmics had begun,
(02:01):
and Annie and Davi had taken overa church not far from from where this
wine bar was, and they camein for a break. They'd probably been
doing a really long session and theycame in and had a cocktail. Everybody
got talking and they needed some backingvocals and we're dealing with very low voices
(02:23):
here, but they didn't have anymoney and we needed we needed a day
in a studio to record the musicalthat we're taking to the Edinburgh Festival.
So it was the beginning of barteringand exchanged vocals for studio time and they
went on to have huge, huge, huge, huge success. On one
(02:45):
of my friends, Eddie Reader,she's a very good friend. She was
in the great eighties band Big Singlewas Perfect. She and I were in
a Garne and band together called Fufuand Light Soup in the early eighties and
(03:06):
she I can remember we were wewere doing this big concert together in Clapham,
Common, and then she said thatshe was just about to go and
start to become the backing vocalist forthe rhythmics, So that was another link.
And then another link with Annie particularlyis that my guitarist that I do
most of my co writing with,the wonderful Tony Remy. He was Annie
(03:30):
Lennx's guitarist for many years in hersolo career. So there are lots of
different links to that very very talentedcouple and quite a bit you quickly sang
with a band called The Republic afterthat, which was a mixture of a
bunch of genres. There was sogreat about the sixties through eighties. A
lot of these bands, they didn'talways get well known, but they mixed
(03:53):
a lot of different genres and around. So the Republic was. It was
an incredible band. It was anAfrican being Latin band looking nineteen eighty one,
long before they used the term worldmusic, and it was a ten
piece band. And the guy,some of the guys that set it up,
wanted a friend of mine who wasa black South African actor, John
(04:15):
match Keiser, to write the lyricsbecause he was a very good where his
dad was a famous writer and journalist, but he was very good with lyrics
and they were a political band,so they wanted him to write the lyrics
and be the singer. And hewas with the Royal Shakespeare Theater and he
said, I can't stay and bethe singer, So Sarah Jane, will
you come and be the singer andI'll write the lyrics. So that's how
(04:36):
it happened. You know. Iwasn't intended to be a singer. I
just was just doing helping a friendout. And we then got signed to
Charlie Gillett's label, Oval Records,who had had Lena Lovitch and oh gosh,
all sorts of other I've got afeeling Ia Jury was with Overlook at
(04:59):
some point, but before we wentto stiff, but anyway, I signed
with them. We did. Wewere the cover of the enemy, We
were the cover of city limits.We had a documentary made about us.
We were the band that was supposedto happen. We packed out all of
our concerts. But it was thetime of Thatcher, time of Thatcher's Britain,
(05:19):
and our politics just didn't rob.Our first single was about the Malvinus
War, where we said, don'tbelieve it's in your interest, and we
also did another song about the royalfamily. And of course radio one didn't
touch it. Capitol Records had juststarted and before it had established what kind
(05:42):
of radio station it was, itpicked up on us and we became you
know what, we were played.We were played, but actually the public,
the republic is the reason why Jimmyand I ended up by singing together
years later, because I and oneof the songs we did was a song
called My Spies where I sung ina kind of mock operatic voice and it
(06:06):
had this Middle Eastern dance beat.I mean, my voice was I'll give
you an example, my spies arein Pozzison around your hot. It was
that kind of voice and it becamevery big in the Gate Clubs and Jimmy
bought it, and Jimmy was convincedI was a man. And Richard Coles,
(06:27):
who became a very good friend ofmine because he was my brother's friend
at drama college three years before afterme same drama college. He used to
come to my concerts. He joinedthe tail end of Bronsky Beat and then
became the Communards with Jimmy and Jimmyand he were very involved with the Minus
Strike because Jimmy's best friend Mark Ashton, who they made the film Pride about
(06:54):
and who was a lot of ourpoliticization was a result of Mark Ashton.
But he got Jimmy involved and theywere doing as Bronsky Beat, doing many
minors benefits. And I with thiswonderful twenty five piece big band called The
Happy End. We did political musicfrom all over the world, twenty five
pieces in piece band. I justhad Peter Flarell, who's who, who
(07:19):
runs play and b that's a ninepiece band, sometimes a little more,
sometimes a little less. I understandthat's tough to manage, but think about
how how do you get everybody togetherand on the same page in a twenty
five piece band? Somehow it happened, and we did, we did.
We did the most wonderful political musicfrom around the world. And what happened
(07:39):
was at that point, when theminor strike was happening, we got together
with Kay Sutcliffe, who was aKent miner's wife. She wrote the lyrics
and then we recorded the song withthe melody and recorded it and it became
the anthem of the minor strike.So that was another link that Jimmy and
I had, was the fact thatwe were heavily involved with the minor strike.
(08:03):
And so Richard brought Jimmy along tosee me just just to basically say,
it looks she is. She's awoman, she's not a man,
and we you know, of courseI knew who he was. I'd been
a big, big fan of Bronskybeat and we got talking and we realized
it was a funny thing that Iwas this very tall, redheaded woman with
(08:24):
a very low voice and he wasthis petite, redheaded man with his incredibly
high voice, and we really clicked. And then the about a week later,
they'd been asked to do a Gazethe Word bookshop launch, which was
across the road to where I lived. I lived in Brixton, and it
was at the Fridge, which isa fantastic venue which I had opened with
(08:45):
the Happy End. We'd been theband that opened the venue, and we
went along. But then because theywere so busy. It was before mobile
phones, you know, you hadto actually get somebody on a phone to
make an agree an arrangement, andthey were busy mote in their first single,
You're My World, so they weren'taround much and managed to eventually get
(09:07):
hold of Jimmy to say, so, what is it that we're going to
sing together at the Fridge Because it'smy home territory. I had to make
sure I knew what I was doing, and he said I don't. We
haven't had time to think about that. And I said, well, I
think I know of a really interestingsong that the two of us could sing
and do it and it would itwould just have this double meaning we'd both
(09:28):
be singing about the same guy.I said, Billy Holiday's Lover a Man,
and they thought that was a greatidea. So Richard found the chords,
I wrote up the lyrics, broughtthem along to the gig. We'd
never performed it, and we getup there in front of a pact Fridge
for Gaze the word benefit and theLuckily the record company were in the audience.
(09:48):
They saw how the audience went crazy. I mean, we were very
camp couple, and we were makingit obvious we were singing about the same
guy. The audience went crazy,and suddenly I was asked if i'd go
to America to record the album withJimmy and Richard. And do you know
what? I was so naive becauseyou know, I've been involved in lots
(10:09):
of really interesting bands. I've neverreally made much money at it. You
don't when there's a twenty twenty fivepeople that you're sharing the profit with.
You know, you were lucky ifyou went away with more than twenty quid
a night. Well, I imaginethat because I'd been asked to go to
America, that I had to payfor my own flight, and I was
already looking into that and thinking,so how do I save that money up?
(10:33):
And of course, if a majorrecord company is going to take you
out to record an album, they'regoing to pay for that. But that's
how naive I was. Oh,look, you're a musician for all this
time, You're used to doing ityourself. A d I Y yeah.
And when the company says, hey, you've got to sing on this single,
I sing with the sing with theCommunards on this year, or go
toward this bad you don't realize,Hey, I don't have to pay my
(10:56):
own way anymore. I have todrive my own truck. It was to
the system. The song of yourvoice is forever enshrined in new way of
history as singing for the Communards onthe song I Don't Leave Me this word?
Yeah? Did you really when doingthe song? What were your thoughts
about it? Did you think itwas going to be timeless? Did you
(11:18):
think it was gonna be something thatthat was going to be surveyed decades later
as one of the favorite number onesof all time by British audiences. We
were staying in New York in thisopen plan apartment and Mike Thorne was the
producer. So Mike Thorne had producedJimmy all the way through Bronsky Beat,
(11:39):
He'd done the Soft Sell. Imean, Mike Thorne produced most of the
number ones in that period of theeighties. You know, he was just
the most fantastic producer. And helived in New York and he booked the
studio. What was amazing. Andwhat the thing I was terribly impressed by
was that Yoko Owner was in thenext studio. I mean, I thought
(12:00):
that was super cool. And anyway, so we when we're staying together in
the apartment, we haven't quite decidedall of the songs. They've written a
lot already, Jimmy and Richard,but what songs were we going to do
it? We knew Love a Manwas going to be one of them,
because that's what everybody gone crazy forthe two of us singing at the benefit,
and Jimmy was a huge disco fanand we were just sort of playing
(12:22):
music and he said, don't leaveme. This way is the one I
want to do, and so itwas just almost a spot as spontaneous thing.
But what helped, I think makeit made it make it that huge
hit. What a contrast we werein our looks and our voices. But
Mike Thorne had something called the Synclavia. It was the beginning of the Synclavia,
(12:46):
and we fed our voices into thisSynclavia, which was able to stretch
it so that you know, goingon and on. That was this machine
helping to stretch our voice for farlonger than we'd have been able to sing.
I want to clerk for this.For the young folks out there,
(13:07):
is not the same thing as autotune. This is for people who can
sing. We really did sing,but it made it far longer than we
could do, and I think werealized as we were doing it there was
something a bit magical about it.We came back to England. I went
straight off to do a tour ofIndia. I was supporting Ravishanka around India
(13:31):
with this great jazz band and MaxRoach was part of the tour and oh
gosh, I cut a yan Garbrick. You know, they were fantastic.
We're doing this tour of India.Then we came back and then we
were taking part in the Red WedgeTour, which was the tour to try
with the Labor Party trying to getthe youth vote. So it was Paul
(13:56):
Weller, it was juniors going,it was bragg, it was madness,
and it was the Communants and wethe Communants at that point were Jimmy Richards
and myself and a drum machine andthe tracks some of the tracks that one
would press a button and they wouldplay. Jimmy Richard was playing live and
(14:18):
we were singing live, but everyoneelse was sort of singing with their bands.
It was the time of Style Councilfor Paul Weller, and once again
it went down incredibly well. Youknow, we were a comical couple to
watch, but we also had thesereally good voices that bounced off each other.
And at the end of the concerts, everyone from you know, the
(14:43):
Smiths came and they guessed on acouple, you had the Specials, and
we all sung together. At theend, we all sung move On Up
the Curtis Mayfield track and we dida Dennis Edwards track and it was the
(15:03):
most fantastic experience. And I thinkwe knew on that tour that we were
onto something, especially with Don't LeaveMe This Way. And then we all
went off on tour. They puttogether an all female band and we went
off touring around the country. Thenwe went off to Europe. We did
(15:24):
an American tour, and we dida Canadian tour, and then I can
remember we were in Italy and Ithink we were playing in Venice and we
suddenly got this this message saying thatwe gone to number one. And that
was in September, in you know, nineteen eighty six. And we had
(15:46):
to be flown back to do Topthe Pops, because that's that's what sold
records in in those days, wasbeing yeah, exactly, and and honestly,
I'd grown up watching Top of thepot so I presumed it to be
this huge studio and it's actually onlya couple of stages, and it's a
matter of camera work and people getoff one stage quickly, and you just
(16:10):
think it's a huge place that it'sreally not. Anyway, we were at
number one for six weeks so byand at this at this period of Top
of the Pops, they weren't lettingpeople sing live. They had periods where
everybody could perform live, but thiswas one of those periods where you couldn't
and Jimmy and I could really sing, and I think it really annoyed us
(16:36):
that each week we were going backto sing on our number one single,
but we were miming, and soon the last time we did it,
what we did, I don't thinkwe even planned it. It just happened.
I the Jimmy started singing or mouthingwhen it was my voice, and
I did the same to hear soparents to the audience that we weren't actually
(17:03):
singing, and we were called upby the heads of the BBC and into
the office. And if you hadnot been at number one, that would
have been pulled. You don't.And there's something to be said though for
the lips sinking. And I knowthey're saying the big deal is, well,
(17:26):
you're not doing the note performing live. Well, think about this,
if you're trying to do live television, right, you're lips sinking or you're
not lip sticking. You're doing liveand some idiot who's never done sound for
you before screws that up. Thatmakes things worse now, it doesn't that
it's true. It's true. SoI know it's funny when people say,
well they're lip sticking blah blah,and and it is a good laugh to
(17:48):
say, well, they're not reallyperforming, but the I mean, that's
their song anyway, it still countsin my book. That's that's very true.
That's very true. But I thinkwe we I think we were just
bored of a not singing, right, I get that, But I like
the way you approached it. Thoughtit just to show them all up.
Yeah with me is Sarah Jane Morris, singer, extraordinaire. I can't even
(18:11):
tell you what genre is because they'rejust way too many. And let's get
into that because the new album,The Sisterhood, is coming out October sixth.
It's a celebration of some of thegreats who have preceded you and some
of your contemporaries, and I meansome are real contemporaries. But we're going
all the way from the early twentiethcentury to from the Bessie Smiths of the
(18:32):
world, all the way to AnnieLennox and Kate Bush, Janis Joplin,
Ricky Lee Jones, Miriam mccable,we'll talk about her too, Arita Franklin,
Nina Simone, Billie Holiday. Thisis a very group and again a
lot of them, not all KateBush, I would says, the main
outlier and all this, but alot of them have the same tone you
had as well for having. ShallI tell you how this came about,
(18:52):
so I think you should. Idon't have a television. I haven't had
a television for fourteen years. SoI read a lot and listened to the
radio. But I read a lot, and in the second lockdown, having
already worn my knee that was supposedto have been removed and replaced before the
(19:15):
first COVID lockdown, I you know, I was doing the walks trying to
stay fit, and I'd worn theknee down. So in the second lockdown,
I thought, well, what doI do to stay sane now?
So I said to my husband,I'd really like to know and learn about
the lives of the women that werethe backdrop to my career, the female
(19:38):
singer songwriters, because there's always themen that were in the books and not
the women. And I know thata they've allowed me to have the journey
I have because they came before.But also, you know, I love
their music. I want to findout what their lives were like. So
I ordered on Amazon biographies autobiographies,and I saturated myself in their music on
(20:03):
YouTube. Some of them had performanceson YouTube, but on the whole it
was just listening to their music andreading books about them. I fell in
love with their life stories and thosepeople. They were incredible women, and
some four are still living. Fourof these women are still living, and
four of the four that are stillliving are also having huge success, you
(20:27):
know, into the later part oftheir careers, which is incredible. But
the one. It was very hard, the point of, you know,
falling in love with all of this. I decided on ten singers, which
are the ones that you've mentioned.There are so many more that I could
have written about, but ten isthe right length for an album, and
I realized at this point I'd probablygot an album's worth of material. I
(20:51):
had very respectfully written their life stories. There's no gossip in there. I've
tried to write them as poetry andto that those singers have much respect I
pay them. And so once wewere allowed to be three meters apart.
My guitarist and co writer, TonyRemy, who, as I said,
(21:12):
has worked with Annie Lennox for years, but he was also the guitarist in
pee Wee Ellis's band from Jake theJames Brown fame, and also, oh
gosh, who's the bass player fromCream? I can't think of his name,
Jack Bruce. Don't don't worry,Sarah, do not worry because a
(21:36):
common theme on this program, andit's been called that old guys remembering stuff,
or twenty remembers stuff. So we'regood here. You're in a good
company. He was in Jack Bridgieanyway, Tony in the first lockdown,
had learned how to use logic recordingon his laptop, very handy for this.
(21:57):
He came and sat on my husband'sI sat opposite him. I bought
a decent microphone during lockdown because I'dbeen doing virtual concerts with my son who
had moved home during that COVID period, and he's a singer songwriter, so
I set up with my mic acrossfrom him. My brother is a photographer
but filmmaker. He set up behinda chair. We'd measured it all out.
(22:19):
We've got the three meters going.And as I was reading these lyrics
to Tony and explaining what I'd beendoing during this period, we both decided
at the same time that what wouldmake the project far better is if we
wrote the song in the musical genreof the artist the song was about.
(22:40):
And that made it a very interestingproject because it called on everything that Tony
and I had ever learned about music, had ever been involved with. You
know, we'd both been in SouthAfrican township brands. We'd both been in
Latin and soul and R and Bin a rock and jazz and folk.
We've done all of that during ourjourney. And because we decided that we
(23:07):
found that each song we wrote kindof wrote very very quickly. You know,
each time Tony would decide to puta different part of guitar part down
as the demo, I'd then comeup with a different backing vocal line or
a different melody, and we goteach song done within about an hour.
And the only reason we didn't actuallyend up by using that as the finished
(23:30):
product because it was pretty good.What we did was we live in a
converted shop which is on a streetcorner, and opposite us are the bins
for the entire area, and thebinman comes twice a day, and the
binman and everything that's related to emptyingbins ended up on my vocal microphone.
(23:52):
So it was just too distorted withrefuse to use it. So but we
did know that we were sitting ona very good project, and I also
knew at that point that it wasn'tjust an album that I mean, I've
written it now as a radio series, as a ten part fifteen minute radio
series about each of those singers,and I'm also writing it as a theater
(24:18):
music piece. And I'm also becausewe've documented every part of it, including
a trip to South South Africa,which I managed to fund through people pre
ordering the CD and various various thingsI did. We've got it all on
film, and so I also thinkit's a documentary. But these women that
(24:45):
I've chosen, and like I said, it's not everybody's choice, are extraordinary,
and several of them not only changedmusical history but changed political history,
one of them being Miriam McKay.But that you said he wanted to talk
to me about now Miriam is eventhough I never met her, I was
(25:07):
so fine wine here. Neither oneof us have met Miriam Quba. I
didn't mean I've worked with people thatworked with her, and I, like
I said, this first band Iwas in the Republic. The writer of
the lyrics was John Maskisa. Hewas a black South African actor and his
(25:29):
father. They'd come over as afamily in exile. His father wrote King
Kong the Musical, which is whatbrought Hugh Maskela and Miriam Mkaba to London
first of all. Okay, sothere's the first link. Then in the
mid eighties I joined artists against apartheid. Jerry Damas from the Specials, and
(25:52):
this friend of mine, Dali Tambo, set it up. Dal Dali Tambo
was the son of Oliver Tambo,who was the head of them. The
whole time that Nelson Mandela was inprison, Daly and his whole family were
also in exile in England. Daliand I became an item, so I
got very involved. I was theone with the megaphone outside South Africa house
(26:15):
every Friday singing Sicaelili Africa. Ithen met during the period of the minor
strike, I met this guy calledMervin Africa, who was a black South
African piano player who had played withMiriam and with Hugh. He lived in
Brixton and he and I started towrite together and he convinced me to become
(26:37):
a safe house. So he andI were the safe houses in Brixton for
South African musicians that were arriving inexile in London. So there's another link.
I supported you, Messecla along theway. I covered one of you
Merscala's amazing songs couldtrane on my albumBloody Rain, which is decated to Africa,
(27:00):
So I think everything goes back toAfrica. But when we were in
artist Gainstoparteite, we managed to connectwith Harry Belifonte and he came and he
became the voice and the face tothe press for US. Harry Belifonte took
Miriam Macaber to America and he helpedher become the most celebrated African artist in
(27:26):
America. He helped politicize her bywhen she was opening up for his concerts
by telling her to say to theaudience, I am not free until my
people are free. He took heralong to the United Nations so she understood
how it worked. He helped writea speech for her that she delivered the
(27:48):
United Nations the second time. Itwas part of what convinced the United Nations
to boycott South Africa. That's huge, it is and if you had a
brush up on most as I didnot know much about her before this interview
as well. Miriamcaba's music was quiteupbeat, so she hit a lot of
pain and a lot of what shewas trying to fight for behind the music.
(28:10):
But that that upbeat, celebratory soundmade her able to tell Americans and
tell Europeans what's really going on overthere, and that captured the attention of
the leadership of all those nations.Plus, of course, the U went
at the time by living every Africannation except South Africa. And you know,
(28:33):
she she was extraordinary. She wasvery petite with this incredible voice.
Incredible voice. But thanks to HarryBelafonte, you know, he was an
extraordinary man and a very generous thingto do. And you know he was
doing that kind of thing right tothe very end, wasn't he. You
know, I would say he was. And it took a lot of help.
(28:55):
Also down in South Africa there werea lot of the newsmakers, made
a lot of new the bet there'sbeen two twos of the world, and
of course Nelson Mandela Winnie as well. But but the one who kind of
was able to bridge the gap betweenthe regular person and the music, the
person who just wanted to be entertained, who didn't know what was going on
around the world, and the worldleaders got them all together to notice what
(29:19):
school was going on down in SouthAfrica. Absolutely, and she I mean
at one point when she got divorcedfrom New Masscla, she married Stokely Carmichael.
I mean, that's a very politicalmove, is it not. The
head of the Black Panthers. Iguess I'd say if she liked them,
she liked them, That's all Ican It was sing and of course as
(29:41):
a result, the FBI were onher case. You know, they were
a little nervous about her at thisstage and her her career. But she
is She's a unique artist. Andwhen I wanted to when I had written
her song, and I wrote awhole part Cosa, which was her language,
(30:02):
and rather than send the files ofthe tracks that we'd recorded to South
Africa for the Seweto Gospel Choir tosing that Cosa, I thought, do
you know what, I've never beento South Africa. I was signed to
a South African label, Jive Records, back in the eighties. I spent
a thousand pounds extra on my contractto make sure I didn't sell in South
(30:22):
Africa. Of course, everybody askedme during that period to go, and
I didn't. Nobody asked me sinceand I thought at that time I was
about to turn sixty three, andI thought, I'm never going to go
unless I go now. And soI set up a gofund me and I
asked fans to pre order this CD, and enough money came in to allow
(30:45):
myself, Tony who had written songwith, plus my brother Rod of the
filmmaker, to go to Johannesburg.But by the month time the money came
into my account, the flights haddoubled. I did not have enough money
for our accommodation. But anyone stayedto you guys, oh we're not going
now. So what I did wasI contacted Dali, having not seen him
(31:07):
since nineteen eighty seven. I trackedhim down in Johannesburg and he and his
wonderful wife Rachel answered the phone.He had four children, he lives just
by the zoo. I told himall about the project, and I said,
did he know anyone any of hisfriends that would like myself and Tony
to come and do a private concertin their home? But they put us
(31:29):
up for three nights, the threeof us, and he turned around and
he said, now you're going tobe my guests. You're my friend.
So we arrived in Tambo Airport,which was named after his father, and
we stayed with the Tambo's and hedrove us to record with the Seweto Gospel
Choir in Seweto on the day thatMiriam would have turned ninety. It had
(31:52):
the most wonderful karma to this.I also knew that I needed to go
to Cape Town, having come thisbar because I wanted for part of our
film and also to play keyboards onthis track Mervin Africa. I knew he
was back in Cape Town. Hewas part of you know, me being
being a safe house and he playedwith Miriam and with Hugh. So I
(32:14):
tracked him down, but I didn'thave that money to change the flights all
for our accommodation. And I rememberedthat years before I'd been contacted by someone
from Italy who lived in Cape Town, because Italy is a big market for
me, asking me if i'd goand do a concert. Now. The
concert never happened, but I rememberthinking, I wonder how to track down
(32:37):
that person, and I wonder whattheir connection was with Cape Town. And
it took me quite a long timeto go through emails, and I eventually
got hold of this woman, GiovannaSatur, and I texted her and I
said, what was your connection withCape Town? And she said, oh,
my husband and I had a hotelhere. We've just sold it because
(32:57):
this is a you know, theCOVID period has destroyed the tourism. And
they were on a safari and shesaid why and I explained about the project
and that I needed somewhere for uscheap, for us to stay in South
Africa in Capetown. She got backto me the next day and she said,
right, well, I've spoken tothe people I sold the hotel to.
(33:17):
They're Italian, they're big fans ofyours. They're going to let you
stay there really cheaply, all threeof you. And she told me how
much it would be, and Isaid, well, that's fantastic, but
I don't even have that money.Do you think I could do a pop
up concert? Even though I've neverbeen to Capetown before. People aren't going
to necessarily know who I am.She got me this is someone that has
no connection with the music industry whatsoever. She got me on to Capetown Radio,
(33:43):
the main radio station. She gotme into at Capetown TV. She
talked to me the next day andsaid, right, I found a venue.
A found a venue. They don'tnormally do don't normally charge on the
door, but they understand what thisproject's about. They don't have a PA.
So tell me what it is youneed me to hire in. How
much money do you need for theentire the rest of the trick and to
(34:07):
change the flights and accommodation of food. And I knew my brother who's the
filmmaker, needed an extra week outin South Africa. You can't go that
far as an artist and not wantto capture as much as you can.
So I told her how much wasneeded to hire a guitar for Tony,
this and the other. She soldout the concert to the Italian community in
Cape Town because I'm big in Italyand they couldn't believe that I was there
(34:30):
on their doorstep. Once again,it raised all the money we needed.
It was wonderful karma. It allworks out in the end. Do you
dare to put it out into theether? You know, and your intentions
are good and mine work, itcan work out, you know. So
(34:51):
that was a big part of thealbum for Tony and I, you know,
it was the highlight really And we'vemade a video now using the Seeta
Gospel Choir and myself and that timefour Miriam's song, and we're hoping to
release it in South Africa because that'swhere it belongs. We've got to hear
it here too. Sarah Jane Morrisis with me on the Outhouse Lounge,
(35:14):
or should I say in the Outhouselounge. Either way it works. The
album is called The Sisterhood. We'retalking about ten women that heavily influenced her,
and she wrote albums sort of alittle biographical song for each of them,
one of them. And again,I don't know if I can focus
on everybody, but I do wantto go back to the turn of the
century, turn of the twentieth century, that is, from the nineteenth to
(35:35):
twentieth. We're going to Bessie Smith. She's the back, she's the epitome
of Saint Louis Blows, but alsoto the song Saint Louis Blows. And
yes, was in a movie calledSaint Louis Blows. There we go.
So it's everything in that respect.But that's way back. And I know
you, I know you're quite astute in the music industry. What turns
you on to Bessie Smith? Sowhat originally took me to Bessie was when
(36:01):
I was at drama school because Iwas training to be an actress. I
my dad was in prison. Okay, so I come from a big family.
I've got six brothers and he wasin a top security prison actually at
this point. And I was thatstudent, that drama student with the huge
chip on the shoulder and we didan in house production. Now I was
(36:25):
there was some pretty formidable people.I was there with Christian Scott Thomas,
Julian Sands, Rupa Everett, Frenchand Saunders who were well. Jennifer Saunders
was the person behind Oh Goshna,I'm sure it's huge in America too,
(36:46):
the TV series that's absolutely fabulous.Did that happen in America? Yes,
it's right there behind the young onethat's the black yea or Saunders and and
Dn French were also at Central withme. So we did an in house
(37:07):
production and the person presenting it wasJulie and Sands, but then Triliquos Stummy
was Rupert Everett's. French and Saundersdid their first circus act. I became
obsessed with prison songs because I hada dad in prison. That took me
to Bessie Smith in my research andI found her incredible. And the reason
(37:31):
I start with Bessie is she putblues on the map. It wasn't a
man, it was a woman.She put Columbia records on the map.
Did you have to spend first thefirst few years of her wife in prisoner
was her mother or something like that. What happened was she by the time
she was nine years old, herparents are dead. Her father was a
(37:54):
pastor. She was busking on streetcorners. Age nine, she got picked
up by Ma Rainey and Parini's vaudevillecircus. That's where she learned her the
art of vaudeville and singing. Shebecame bigger than Marrainy. She became so
big and so successful that she wasable because of being a segregation she wasn't
(38:19):
able to eat in a restaurant orstay in a in a hotel, So
she bought a Pullman train and asa result, her entire troop were able
to travel around America on this Pullmantrain. But while they were traveling,
they had the clue Klux Klan sortof firing at them as they were traveling.
You know, there were many bulletholes in that train. And she
(38:44):
she was extraordinary, an extraordinary woman. There's very little footage this bit that
you're showing. Now, that's almostall that there is a Bessie, but
she paved the way for all ofthe rest that came. And she she
married the bastard husband, even thoughmost of her relationships were with with women.
(39:07):
She adopted one of her dancers,one of her lover dancers sons.
When this person was dying her thehusband was using all of her money.
She only really managed married to himbecause he was her manager. He used
all her money to put, youknow, put it into another vaudevillian singer
(39:30):
that he was in love with,and when she was no longer when they
had divorced and she was no longergiving him money, he blackmailed her by
taking the child. She never eversaw that child again. Lord only knows
what happened to it, but probablywent to a home this boy. Anyway,
(39:51):
she had to re she had tototally recreate herself, because you had
the depression and the music that bythe time people were buying records again,
it was no longer that kind ofblues was Billy Holiday. She paved the
way for Lady Day and so shea bit like me with the communis,
(40:13):
having been, you know, havinga number one nearly all over the world
and traveling in style, I decidedI didn't want that kind of career and
I took a very different line.So I was back in the back of
a van traveling like that, andit was almost like that for Bessie from
being you know, the most famousblues singer that there was, to having
to travel in her her old percardwith the other musicians to go down Route
(40:38):
sixty one or sixty six to herconcerts. And one day a biscuit lorry
drove into her severed her arm.She died, but she died a pauper
because he'd taken all the money.And she was in an unmarked grave.
And thirty three years later, hermaid heard that Janice Joplin was talking about
(41:04):
how influenced she was by Bessie Smith, and she went to Janice and she
said, did you know she's inan unmarked grave? And Janice and she
paid for the gravestone. Janice Joplindied that year. So they're all linked.
They are all somehow linked, theseincredible singers. And of course another
(41:27):
influence you was sang about on youralbum The Sister Hot. Yes. Well,
an interesting story about Janice is she'scropped up many times in my life.
The first time was I My firstTV series that I was in as
an actress, was directed by AntoniaBird, and she went on to,
(41:52):
you know, to make movies.But at this point she'd come from the
Workhoff Theater and she was doing thispolitical I think it was a five or
six part series for the BBC aboutthe docklands crisis, and I played an
an investigative journalist on the radio andI was murdered, but I was sleeping
with so many people, so therewere so many people that could have murdered
(42:14):
me. And that was this firstseries. She was very political. She
and I really got on, andshe asked me to write the music for
her second TV series called The Men'sRoom with Bill Nigh and many other great
actors, and she and I remainedfriends. She did a film called Priest,
which won all sorts of awards.Everything was very political and about what
(42:36):
was going on with Antonia Bird.She went to LA and she contacted me
late one night and she said,Sarah, you've got to write your life
story. It's a film. AndI said, I can't write it.
My mum and dad are both stillalive. It's I said, but I
have just read this amazing book aboutJanice Duplin and I could play her.
(43:01):
Can you buy can you buy thestory? She went ahead, she went
and read it. She tried tobuy it because she decided yet she was
right I could play her, andJanie's sister just at that point was wanting
to do the musical about Janice,and so I wasn't she wasn't allowed to
(43:22):
buy it, and that didn't happen. Okay, So that's the first time
I nearly play Janie. The secondtime was I was doing a whole week
of concerts at Ronnie Scott's, whichis it's the most famous jazz club in
Europe as a big, big history, and it was a place where Billy
Holiday and Sarah Ball and all sortsof people did actually play in London,
you know, So it's got thisamazing history. But in those days,
(43:45):
you did six nights a week,two shows a night. So I we're
talking a Sunday morning. I've justsung probably one hundred and fifty songs,
you know, that week. I'mvery tired, I'm dyslexic. I'm counting
the cash backstage, wanting to paythe band. This what seemed to be
(44:06):
a drunk American came back said saidthat I was the nearest thing to Janie
that he'd seen, and he toldme that he'd written this song for her,
and all I was thinking of,I've lost where I am with my
counting please go away and he andhe said that they were Paramount Movies were
making a film about her life andthat I should be seen for it.
And I remember thinking, oh,yeah, of course you wrote that song,
(44:30):
you know, because boy, hehappens a movie. You're going to
do the movie thar and then andthen and then I was also I'd forgotten
about the movie. I was justcounting the money. That week I read
this tiny little pop a piece inThe Guardian and it said something about this
movie that had it had cast MelissaEtheridge as Janice, and it said something
(44:52):
like she'd run off with the producer'swife. And I remember thinking, hey,
Janice would have run off with theproducer's wife. This is it citing.
This is interesting. So I gotmy acting agent to put me up
for the part. I learned Balland Shane, which you know, which
is associated with many of the bluesartists. I did Texan dialect lessons and
(45:15):
I was led to believe that thepart was mine, and someone at the
same time offered the part to BritneySpears. Now can you imagine this was
when that was twenty four years agoand Brittany Carton had been very old and
definitely wasn't right to play Jennie something. It got shelved, and it got
(45:38):
eventually got made years and years laterwith Redi's Elwiger, and I think it
went straight to DVD, which feltlike, you know a little bit.
It made me feel slightly better thanit went straight to DVD. I don't
know. I think some of thosemovies are so high class that they bypassed.
The theory is entirely in Go Streetand I never saw it. And
I'm sure Renie's Elwood. She wasa better choice than Britain for the part,
(46:00):
and she's a good actress. Butanyway, what I did, because
this film didn't happen at this point, I still got the script in my
covered. What I did was Iwrote a song about the experience because I
had banked a lot on this.In my head, I'd relocated to America.
You know, all of this washasposably happening. So the song I
(46:21):
wrote is called I've put All MyMoney on a Horse named Janice Choplin.
It's one of the best written.So that was the beginning of me starting
to pay homage. Years later,I did two albums with Mark Gribo to
Tom Waits's main side man. Youknow, in fact, responsible for so
much of the wonderful sound that is, you know that is associated with Tom
(46:44):
and he and I did two albumswhere we did just voicing guitar and one
of the things we covered was Toxicby Britney Spears. But enough Revenge,
you see, I hadn't gone thewhole way, and I sung it as
if I was had a heroin addictionrather than addiction to love. But that
(47:05):
felt like the closure. Well thereit goes all full circle right there once
again. But Janice, let metell you this. So what I discovered.
I'm sure you already know this,but we the rest of the world
didn't really know about Janis Joplin untilthe Summer of Love and the Monterey Pop
Festival nineteen sixty seven, the sametime as we discovered about Jimmie Hendricks.
(47:27):
She was dead three years and fourmonths after that. So everything we heard
about that incredible singer happened in thatshort time. That's shocking, isn't it.
She was very dominant in her fieldfor that short of a time.
But it is correct, and shewas It's a said story. There's a
lot of said stories around that time, and even today we lost a lot
(47:49):
of great artists young we certainly have, right, but again that's happened over
the centuries too, right. Ithink out of the lists that I've made,
the ones that you can hear theinfluence, really hear the influence of
my voices is Janis and Nina exactly. There the two that you can really
hear. I think it's a greatalbum. It's called The Sisterhood. I
can't go through everybody at this point. I do have a little bit of
(48:12):
time left, but I wanted totalk about one of your contemporaries because we
went to the earlier days of musicor recorded music. We got to the
sixties and some really good rock there. We're talking Janis Chaplin. But Kate
Bush, you're contemporary. It's againshe's kind of an Outlaiyer here because she's
more of a contemporary of yours asan influence and sings very differently from you
(48:34):
as a four active soprano. Yeah, they all actually sing totally differentially to
me, and I've not any ofthe songs tried to sound like them.
I am telling their life story asme. But with Kate, I mean
I can still. I can rememberbeing in the common room in the green
room in our drama college when WeatheringHeights first came out. Somebody played the
(48:57):
vinyl and and it was like,oh my god, what is that?
It was like, how how theworld also reacted to Freddie Mercury's voice.
They've never heard anything like it before, you know, it was like,
oh my gosh. And I lovedthe same with Annie Lennox. I loved
how Kate and Annie were. Itwas very obvious how influenced by David Bowie
(49:20):
they both were too, and thatwhole gender fluidity, you know, that
was all happening through them, justlike it was with David Bowie way back
there. That's terribly appropriate now.And and Kate, like Annie, really
used video to tell those stories,to tell the stories. You know,
they were both they are, butthey are both astonishing performers and the tellers
(49:45):
of stories. So with Kate,when I came to to want to research
her story, there's she's a veryprivate person. She always has been.
And she is the only one outof that whole list that had the white,
middle class bohemian lifestyle. You know, she was brought up in a
(50:07):
family you know, the equivalent ofa kind of erectory with parents that really
encouraged all the children to be ascreative as they could be. It was
so different to the other people's stories, and there aren't any well. I
didn't come across any really good booksthat told me about Kate, and I
didn't come across any interviews that reallytold me who she was. So I
(50:30):
thought, right, I'm going toabsorb myself in her music and her lyrics,
and I'm going to find out whoshe is through that. And when
I discovered that she wrote Man witha Child in his Eyes when she was
twelve years old, I thought,whoa a poet at twelve? I mean,
it's extraordinary. And I thought,so, how will she know how
(50:53):
much respect I am giving her?And my husband and I were talking about
this, and I didn't know thisfact. It was him that told me
that Rambo, the French poet whochanged in a way, changed French language
because he was so successful. Hewrote his poetry age fifteen. And I
(51:14):
thought, Okay, she grew upin the suburbs. I'm going to call
her Rambo of Suburbia. She willdefinitely know who Rambo is and she will
understand its connection, so I'm notthe storm character we're talking with. Not
that exactly what other people will think. So I then I tracked down a
(51:36):
homoerotic rambo poem and a friend ofmine who's in her seventies, she looks
like Piaff, she sounds like Piaff. I asked her as she would read
it, so we filmed her readingit. I had paid for the string
arrangement of for Nina simone song bya friend of mine. He also did
(51:57):
the journey one for the Nina one. It didn't work for myself and Tony,
but I paid quite a bit ofmoney and I couldn't afford not to
use it. So when I waswe were recording her song, I said
to the engineer, can we changethe key of this and can we reverse
it so that we can somehow useit in Kate's song? And we did,
and it starts off because you hearthese backward transpose strings with this wonderful
(52:25):
French voice at the opening, itsounds like you're going, you're you're You're
in a French noir film. Youknow it's And then I knew I had
to make the song as English aspossible because Kate Bush is so English and
and I also with every every oneof the these people's songs, I wanted
(52:47):
there to be lyrical and musical referencesto them. And so because she'd done
that duet with Peter Gabriel, whichwas just so moving, you know,
don't give up, And because shespends so long getting the most amazing sounds
in the studio, you know,she's a great producer and writer. I
(53:07):
used I used dig red I usedGeorge Harp, my ex husband who was
in the Pogues, who works withTom Waits and works with so many people.
He lives in America. I wantedto have him on there, you
know, and he is a phenomenaldig redo player, and Geawge's harp.
So we fiddled about with the sound, but we created what we think Kate
(53:29):
might have done had it been her, and we go into that kind of
whole dub section at the end whichreferences Peter Gabriel. We even tried to
come up with the bass of TonyLevin we were you know, we we
have all of that there, soyou know each song. If you're a
fan of any one of those singers, I don't think you'll be disappointed because
(53:52):
we have you know, we have. We've tried to deliver with not only
their life story, but with musicthat is representative of their journey. Sarah
Jane Morris once again. The albumis The Sisterhood. It's coming out October
sixth. If you want some moreinformation on Sarah Jane, check out her
(54:13):
website. And I believe it's SarahJane Morris dot COO dot UK. I
think I got that right. Howabout that you have? It used to
be dot com, but there's athere's a Hollywood actress called Sarah Jane Morris.
Yes, that doesn't help, itdoesn't. I decided to let her
have that one type of code dotUK. Well that's nice. I like
that. That's it's it's it's reallysporting of you, I'll say. Well,
(54:37):
she was incredibly popular as well.Jane. Thank you very much for
being out with us. Let's haveyou on again soon. I'm sorry we
couldn't get through all of the influences, but you can when you get the
album again out October six You canget them on all the digital outlets you
can find them. You can evenhold the CD if you can buy the
(54:58):
CD as well. Thanks again andStarry Chain Morris, thank you so much
and thank you for listening. Staycool and enjoy yourself and have fun in
the outhouse. Lad
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com