Pour la journée internationale de la femme j'avais envie de partager le programme sur les rockeuses que Justine Frischmann (chanteuse guitariste de Elastica )a fait pour BBC6: Comment vivent elles leur statut de musiciennes dans le monde du rock? C'est la première partie de son programme. Cela dure 30 minutes.
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I’m Justine and you’re listening to 21st Century Girl Tonight, and I’ll be talking to female musicians who’ve pushed the boundaries for women In rock, dance, urban, and electronic music. I’ll be looking at the impact these artists have made and discover from them if Rock’N’Roll is still a boy’s club.
None has challenged herself more than Polly Harvey. She’s always preferred to speak through her music.
PJ Harvey “When I’m playing in front of a crowd and I can see people’s faces and I can see their reaction, that means more to me than anything really, and the way it’s reflected in the way records are selling. But mostly the most direct is seeing an audience reaction and how the feedback is going between myself and the crowd, and that’s really how I get the feeling for it. that’s the people I most respect. You have to kind of meet people half way by doing interviews, I mean I don’t mind it, it’s obviously not something I’ve chosen to do. I’d rather be a musician because I don’t speak very well, doing music is a different way of communication. But I see it as a necessary part to get the people to know the music. Sometimes it can be quite difficult to keep faith in what you’re doing. I’m always trying to experiment going in different directions. People recognize that and acknowledge that, and then that’s great”
Polly has established herself as a wide respected musician, a rare achievement for a female artist. Somehow it seems harder for female artists to remain credible as well as successful but Polly is unusual in this sense. Female Journalist of the NME tries to explain why: She’s really exceptional PJ Harvey in the way that Tricky is really exceptional or Tom Yorke is exceptional."
Male journalist NME: “ I think PJ Harvey is revered as a convert pioneer, very English in her own way but at the same time totally self-created. PJ Harvey is quite different from other women in music. She’s first and foremost an artist, she’s a proper musician, there’s never any doubt. She’s definitely managed to stay credible and successful as a female artist, each record is different from the one before”
Although Polly’s most recent material has established her more commercially and critically, it’s 1998 ”It’s Desire” she’s the proudest of.
PJ Harvey: I feel that was the highlights for me only because it was such a difficult record to make. Im just glad I pushed myself and stood by it and I knew this is how it is and I wanted it to be. It didn’t win a lot of favours and not many people bought it (Laugh)
In 2001 Polly won the Mercury Music Prize with “Stories from the cities, stories from the Sea”. She was the first female to do so. When she began work on the follow-up album, she was determined to take a very different approach.
PJ : “I did want to make it a very home-made way, in my house, and wanted to have a very warm sounding, welcoming record, just very homely. I did want to play most of it myself, as a form of intimacy. It’s got more of me in it because it’s not filtered through by so many different people. I just feel it’s inexhaustible really, the amount of music and sounds that remain to be discovered and things that I want to try doing and experimenting with that. I want to do other things, branch in different other forms of writings. Some writing is such a strong part of my soul, I can’t imagine ever not wanting to do that.”
Despite deliberately subverting traditional concepts of female sexuality, and writing lyrics exploring the darker side of the feminine psyche, Polly has quickly distanced herself from talking about gender differences in music. “ I can’t say I have been aware of being a woman in this business, I only see myself as a musician, not a female musician. Music interests me, not gender”
Female NME journalist: “ I think that it’s a bit simplistic for her to say that there is no difference between her and let’s say Nick Cave, because with women there’s always a kind of presentation issue with your body and the way you look, and she’s definitely associated with that.”
Male NME journalist: “The fact that she gets irritated by these questions about being a woman, suggests that she has been treated differently. It sorts of marginalizes her to say that she is a female artist. It implies that she’s not worthy as being from the same podium as male artists.”
In America, you could look at Coutney Love. She’s almost a case of her own because her life is so chaotic. She’s not been able to have a coherent artistic progress in the way that PJ. Harvey has because probably Courtney Love decides to embrace celebrity.
Opinionated, blunt and ever eager to attract controversy, Courtney Love is one of the most recognized female musicians. Since emerging in the 1990’s, Courtney Love has been demonized in the press and accused of all sorts. Although normally outspoken, Courtney is surprisingly reticent to have her own words broadcast.
Her friend Melissa says : “she is a revolutionary type of woman. She’s been picked on because there’s not many other women like that. She’s like an easy target. The old-fashioned world wants you to smell proper, but I already feel we’re beyond that”
Melissa “A lot of the men who admired Nirvana really loved Kurt Cobain and they don’t want that love to be taken away by a woman. It’s a classic. You can say whatever you like. They can’t stand it, and she would always suffer from that”
Melissa “ Because she shouts louder than other women, it scares you. It’s so old fashioned. Give me a break. There’s lots of wild, eccentric men in the rock history.”
Male journalist NME: “ Compared to Pete Doherty who has been into robberies etc…, people tend to forget he’s the father of a very young child, as Courtney Love, people want to take her kid away from her. She’s an irresponsible mother. I mean that’s an obvious inequality”
After the demise of Hole and the brief time with the Smashing Pumpkins, Melissa focuses on her songs. She decided the only way forward for complete artistic control was to go alone. “ My instinct when I decided to get out was to deconstruct all structure that I had been around, like record companies, bad stuff that weighed me down a little bit. I blew all the structures and said: I’m gonna make the record of my dreams and the only way was that if Im creatively and financially in charge, in a way it was about returning to my innocence and be the 19 year old who picked up a bass just because she loves music.”
Unlike Hole, when Ash was looking for a new member, gender wasn’t really an issue.
Ash Frontman, Tim Wheeler: “We advertised in different fanzines, and I met Charlotte, she was in another band.”
Charlotte: “ The studio we were recording in was called The Fortress, it was a den full of bands, and I met the boys there when I first moved to London.”
Tim “She learnt 20 songs in two days” Ash band was divided at first. Many had seen that Charlotte must be Tim Wheeler’s girlfriend.
Tim: “When Charlotte joined there was a lot of jealousy. She was a quick singer and a quick learner too”
Meanwhile Charlotte started composing her own material. Her creative drive grew so strong that she managed to write 10 songs for her solo project, at the same time as recording Ash’s “Meltdown” in L.A
Charlotte “ I just started laying down songs with thousands of harmonies. It was really good fun writing all this stuff. Earlier this year, Charlotte found herself in an embarrassing situation. When her debut album “Summer” was released in the same week as Ash’s latest one.
Charlotte “ At this time last year I didn’t want to do any gig at all, I found it extremely daunting and now that I’ve done it, I want to do it again. I love writing guitar stuff, I love doing both, it’s a challenge. I really want to do something bigger and better.”
In Elastica, it was a huge relief to speak out and be free at last from male ego issues although it did take a long time to prove ourselves in the studio..We knew exactly how we wanted it to sound and had a grasp with the technologies we were using. I wonder if things have changed.
Electreline are a new girl band from Brighton
“ Maybe it is changing but I still think that for bands starting out, it can be quite tough. I could see how girls in bands can end up being put off. Most guitar shops are run by men and stuff so it can feel a bit like a boy’s club. When you’re walking in and there’s a kind of expectation that you’re not gonna know anything and that your worries are being on stage looking pretty.”
Electreline’s second album “The Power Out” was produced by Steve Albini. On its release, the band was surprised to read reviews that suggested that he had more input than they remembered. “Oh he must have played all that record, etc.. In fact he didn’t have any input in the contents of the songs. It’s frustrating! you don’t want to go around saying that all the time! We totally respect him, and it’s not his fault that people just assumed that!”
Despite the progress of PJ Harvey and Courtney Love’s influence, it’s still a struggle for girls with guitars to be taken seriously. The Duke Spirit are a London based rock band fronted by Liela Moss. Liela is well too aware of being the only woman on tour.
Liela: “The other day, we were all seated at this huge table with a crew of 11 people, and someone said: You’re the only bird, does it feel weird?”
Male journalist NME: “We would put more female musicians in the NME if there were more female musicians!” Deputy Editor says that there are simply not enough girl bands around.
“ We did a lineup of underground bands in London and when we got the pictures back we thought there weren’t many women in here. We’re conscious of it but we can’t add a female artist in it just for the sake of it. The readers would hate that and the female artists would feel patronized.”
Female journalist NME: “ As a female journalist you’re often asked to write or talk about women in rock.: “would you like to write a book about women in rock?”.. I find it a bit disheartening.. “do we have to? We’re here now! Aren’t we?”
All girl band The Donnas are still in the 8th grade. Apart from wanting to express themselves artistically and creatively, they don’t mind confessing that they also have other motives.
“It’s really unfair because the guys in bands have lots of girls, but we didn’t get any guys!. They would make fun of us at school. And there were all these strange rumours they would spread about us. We got a lot of “girls can’t play..Play with your dolls” We wanted to show them that we could play better than them and that we would go further than them.”
They certainly managed that. They were signed by Atlantic Records and are now enjoying mainstream popularity. How did attitudes change towards them since they became successful?
“ People don’t come up to us and say “you can’t play cos you’re a girl” It’s a little more settled, but there are still these attitudes . We have to prove ourselves every time we walk into a new club, to a new radio station or whatever. Lots of people think they know what we’re all about just because we’re girls, and it’s not true!”
“ I think that there are more women in rock so it has become more acceptable, but it’s like “Oh I didn’t know that chicks could play”..”You’re good for a girl”..and that’s really annoying…”But I just sound good!”}
Part 1 over
Videos of the bands here
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