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I loved Desire so much—I mean, Christ, it was probably even my first small education into racial injustice because of the song “Hurricane.” And on the song “Isis,” he sort of gave me my sexual awakening a little bit. When he goes, “She said, ‘You look different,’ I said, ‘Well, I guess”/[…] She said, ‘You going to stay?’ I said, ‘If you want me to, yes’”—when he says “Well, I guess,” I was like: ooooh.
When I would fake being sick and stay home from school, which was most of the time, as soon as everybody would leave, I’d put on my roller skates and skate around the house. My little ritual was putting on “Like a Rolling Stone” and roller skating around the dining room table 88 times for the number of keys on the piano. When I met Bob Dylan at the Grammys, twentysomething years ago, I told him about the roller skating thing.
I have spent many years wondering about that photo of you and Bob Dylan together at the Grammys in 1997.
I was at the Grammys, I think, and [longtime manager] Andy [Slater] said, “Fiona, c’mere c’mere, Bob Dylan wants to meet you.” And I was like, “What?” I went over and stood with him and told him that story, and somebody took a picture. I’m wearing a brown dress with apples on it, and I got that from Ella Fitzgerald’s estate sale. It was a skirt of hers, and I wore it as a dress. So I’m in Ella Fitzgerald’s skirt made into a dress, standing with Bob Dylan.
I’ve read that you would play Ella Fitzgerald’s songs as a child. Do you feel like her singing influenced yours? It’s so rhythmic.
I’m sure that she did. I listened to music so much up until the time I started writing my own. And then I just didn’t so much anymore. I loved Ella Fitzgerald. I loved Joan Armatrading, I loved Cyndi Lauper, I loved Harry Belafonte, I loved Bob Dylan, I loved Miriam Makeba, I loved Jack Teagarden. If I listen to any of the ones I really loved, I get so overwhelmed still.
My record player is not plugged in, but I have a Miriam Makeba vinyl on my wall up there, and I recently went and bought three other records that are really important to me: Alice Coltrane, Radha-Krsna Nama Sankirtana; Kate Bush, The Kick Inside, and Joan Armatrading, To the Limit. If I had to pick one record that’s closest to me from when I was a kid, it’s To the Limit. I feel like it influenced me a lot.
What about Joan Armatrading’s music impacted you?
I love her singing style, I love her voice, I love the way she says things. I got really hooked in by the song “You Rope You Tie Me” and this one part where she goes, “You’re a lion in my path/In my light/’Scuuuuuse me,” she just says “’scuuuuse me” with gritted teeth. It was her performance of that song that I was like: “I really hear this woman. She’s getting through to me.”
She was playing in New York like 10 or 15 years ago, an outdoor show down by one of the piers. I was just walking by and I heard her, so I went and I watched Joan Armatrading by myself. I tried to make a video when she started doing “You Rope You Tie Me,” and I got tapped by the guard telling me to stop filming. In that moment I felt such closeness and empathy for all the people I’ve seen at my shows getting told “don’t film that” “don’t interrupt.” You’re like, “I’m sorry!” I felt so ashamed.
You reference Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” on the song “Fetch the Bolt Cutters.” How did you first get into her?
When I was 11, I became good friends with my brother’s girlfriend Lisa. She was six feet tall and she used to have a mohawk that was like a foot tall. We spent a whole summer in L.A. together. She worked at a video store, and they paid me under the counter. They started doing this prank where, anytime anybody would try to rent porn, they would send me up [to get the tape]. So I’d go on the ladder to get Debbie Does Dallas, Debbie Does…—Debbie did so many places. I was constantly on this ladder, like, “OK, here!” We eventually got fired in an epic water fight—I got caught in the bathroom making spit balls, and we spilled shit all over the computers and just ran out of there. And Lisa introduced me to Kate Bush. I remember sitting on the kitchen counter at my brother’s house and hearing “Babooshka” for the first time. I used to sing and play a bunch of her songs from The Kick Inside at my piano when I was a kid: “Feel It” and “Moving” and “The Kick Inside” and “Wuthering Heights.”
I don’t think I’m very aware of it. But it absolutely delights me. You know, in the song “Fetch the Bolt Cutters,” I say, “a girl can roll her eyes at me and kill” and that’s absolutely true. But the opposite is also true. If other girls like me, I’m like: “Let’s be best friends!” If somehow I’m actually helping another woman or girl do what she wants to do, and express herself and feel good about that—it makes me feel like I’m in a band with them. And I love that.
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