Hace unas semanas, encontré en la red una entrevista a Alison Moyet. La concedió hace casi un año, pero creo que vale la pena incluirla ya que es un repaso a su vida, carrera musical y además nos presenta un nuevo look de Alison, mucho más delgada y muy guapa. La entrevista la concedía por la edición de un nuevo disco recopilatorio que salía el año pasado en Gran Bretaña. Incluimos las fotos y la entrevista íntegra en inglés.
A few weeks ago, I found on the web an Alison Moyet's interview. It was given nearly a year ago, but I think it's worth posting as she checks on her life, musical career and she also shows her new look, much thinner and pretty. She gave the interview due to the release of a new compilation album out in Britain last year. We enclose the photos and the interview.
'There’s a lot to be said for saying NO': Alison Moyet talks about her self-imposed exile from music
By Maureen Patton. (Daily Mail.co.uk. October, 2nd, 2009)
Her soulful voice made her an overnight star but the pressure of fame grew too much. Here Alison Moyet talks about commitment, parenthood and agoraphobia - and how taking a sanity-saving break from the music scene is the reason she’’s still a success 25 years on.
Alison Moyet is an hour behind schedule for our interview, but when she comes over to apologise, she’’s worth the wait. Boy, does she look good.
At 48, the honey-blonde who was once operatic-sized now looks so amazingly slinky that she wonders, rather endearingly, whether she has been guilty of ‘‘smouldering’’ too much in our photo shoot.
‘‘My fans would be offended if I posed in a provocative way –– where’s the feminist stance in that? I don’’t want to betray myself,’’ laughs the artist formerly known (in her crop-haired punk days) as Alf.
It’s hard to believe that a quarter century has elapsed since Genevieve Alison Jane Moyet went solo. Once a shop assistant by day and a singer in various pub-rock and blues bands by night, this college dropout became an accidental pop star at the age of 21 after forming the electronic pop duo Yazoo with Vince Clarke, and having an unexpectedly massive hit with her yearning interpretation of his ballad ‘‘Only You’’.
Although the overnight success freaked her out, it led to a solo career as a soul queen with a thrilling contralto voice that has deepened and ripened with age. Alison turned songwriter herself with such top-ten successes as ‘‘All Cried Out’’, ‘‘Love Resurrection’’ and ‘‘Is This Love?’’, sold 25 million records worldwide, won a clutch of Brit awards and confirmed her place in the pop constellation by performing at Live Aid in 1985.
Like all great soul singers, she wears her heart on her sleeve, and she went on to live the blues that she sings, struggling with broken relationships (she has three children by three different men), single motherhood on the road with her eldest child when he was still a toddler, and a fall-out with her record label that prevented her from recording any studio albums for eight years (she changed company after that).
Bouts of manic depression led to a paranoid agoraphobia that turned Alison into a semi-recluse who avoided show-business parties and hid in cupboards whenever a stranger knocked on the front door – until the love of a good man (we’ll get to that later) helped her to face down her fears.
She made a triumphant public comeback in 2001 as the prison wardress Mama Morton in the West End musical Chicago, then in 2002 released the album Hometime, with a sleeve that showed off her square-jawed, big-eyed, Sophie Dahl-style beauty. And she received some of the best reviews of her career for her most recent studio album, 2007’s The Turn, which confirmed her as a survivor who thrives on challenge.
Not bad for the girl from an Essex council estate who categorises herself as ‘‘an aggressive French peasant’’, the youngest child of a working-class French printer and his English wife, who grew up listening to her father’’s collection of Gallic chansons in Basildon, of all places. No wonder she didn’’t know how to fit in. She is the only one of her family to become a professional musician: her brother Clifford runs a specialist beer-importing business in Southend and her sister Jeanne works in agricultural marketing.
‘‘I never burned myself out or damaged the voice in a way that lots of people did. My neurosis saved me’’
There was a time when Alison needed a few slugs of brandy to calm her nerves before going on stage. She says, ‘‘I do a bit less cognac in the wings than I did, because now I feel anticipation as opposed to absolute fear. I feel quite comfortable on stage because it’’s one of the few places, outside my home, where I know what’’s expected of me.’’
Her fanbase ranges from 16-year-olds to 70-somethings, and from straight to gay; she seems to appeal to everyone who appreciates a great, glorious outpouring of emotion served up in that tough-but-vulnerable voice. And with an 80s revival upon us, the time seems right for the release of a greatest hits retrospective and a UK tour this autumn.
As for her surprising new look, I’ve been tipped off beforehand that she has shed a lot of weight. She doesn’t want to go into details because her weight was once a media obsession among the body-fascist diet police, but the 5ft 10in Alison looks so relaxed that she’s clearly happy with her current size.
Although she’’s not saying, she looks to me like a very fit and healthy 12 or 14. Although she had a breast reduction (from G cup to D) back in 1989, she says she is unlikely to succumb to further cosmetic surgery. Instead she looks forward to "the invisibility of age. Women become more interesting as they get older, because they can put everything in context and have a greater compassion’’.
She says that the decision to shed the pounds was nothing to do with vanity but everything to do with preparing for old age. ‘‘I have lost and put on big batches of weight in my life many, many times,’’ she admits. ‘‘But what concerns me is the idea of being an obese old woman, because I don’’t like the idea of being physically incapable in someone else’’s hands.
I have smoked and eaten too much rubbish in my time, but the catalyst for me to do something about it was not wanting to be incapacitated. It goes back to my need for privacy.’’
Alison had no mentor to help her cope with the pressures of overnight stardom for which winners of X Factor-style shows now get professional support. She had to learn for herself and make mistakes along the way. Like a lot of people who have been through therapy, she still seems addicted to it, with a tendency to over-analyse herself and occasionally talk in metaphor. Yet she also makes a great deal of sense, having now achieved a work-life balance that eluded her for years.
‘‘I felt like a square peg in a round hole in the music industry’’
When I first interviewed her two years ago, she said that becoming a mother had been a turning point which ‘‘stopped me from being the centre of my world’’. Her son Joe, now 24 (by her brief first marriage to hairdresser Malcolm Lee), was followed by daughters Alex, 21 (after a short-lived relationship with tour manager Kim McCarthy, which ended before Alex was born), and Caitlin, 13, with her second husband, David Ballard.
‘‘It annoyed my record company when I first become pregnant: a lot of swearing went on,’’ she admits. ‘‘I was 23 and I still think that’’s too young to have children – Joe would have benefited more from having an older mother. But you deal with the cards you’re given,’’ she adds with a philosophical shrug.
After Joe’s birth in 1985, she found herself dragging him around with a bag of toys from one hotel room to another, and still not seeing much of him. ‘‘I realised that this was the height of selfishness, so I stopped touring. It’’s not a child’s environment; it doesn’t suit their needs, so I’m surprised when people say they take their kids everywhere with them.
'But since I’ve been in a solid relationship with David, I’ve been able to work much more. Before, as a single mother, I had one nanny, who worked weekdays for ten years. When she went, I didn’t replace her, because I didn’t want a succession of au pairs and nannies.’’
She met David – a 46-year-old teaching assistant and former social worker for adults with special needs – 20 years ago at the house of her oldest girlfriend, one of the few places where she felt safe during her agoraphobic days. (‘‘I never socialised in the industry –– the only people I would see were my schoolfriends or early band friends from before I became famous.’’)
Another long-standing confidante who gave her a sense of security was comedienne Dawn French, whom Alison has known since she was 21 (and with whom she performed in the West End play Smaller in 2006). As she explains, ‘‘Dawn is someone who is able to work a friendship and put in an effort to the point that we became really connected.
‘‘I was always an odd girl: I had managed to alienate lots of people and wasn’t very employable. So I felt like a square peg in a round hole in the music industry and created a lot of neurosis for myself. And people allowed me to sink further into self-pity by indulging me. 'Meeting David was a life-changing moment because he doesn’’t indulge me at all – which means we live an exceptionally normal life,’’ says Alison, who is now based in semi-rural Hertfordshire, and even keeps chickens.
It was David who finally cured her agoraphobia by dragging her out to football matches (they’re Southend United supporters). ‘‘I found them so joyous –– I just loved the community of being a face in the crowd,’’ she beams.
‘‘David is the great, stable guy in my life. It doesn’t mean that you have this wonderful flawless relationship, because there are still times when you want to poke each other’s eyes out with a big stick,’’ she adds, laughing. ‘‘He is a real fitness fanatic and took me hill-walking for our tenth wedding anniversary a couple of years ago, which was a pain in the a***. But commitment is a choice that you make, it’s not something that falls down like manna from heaven. And he made that commitment.’’
When their daughter Caitlin was born, David volunteered to take on the childcare. ‘‘His relationship with our daughter is fantastic as a consequence,’’ says Alison. ‘‘David is secure in his own masculinity; there’’s no element of him that’s emasculated by being a househusband. And Alex was only a year old when we got together, so David is very much her father as well.’’
‘‘I have lost and put on big batches of weight in my life many, many times’’
The children have done well: Alex and Joe – who was just four when his mother met David – have both gone to Cambridge University, and the science-minded Joe starts a master’s degree in natural computing this autumn. Meanwhile, 13-year-old Caitlin shows an extraordinary memory for lyrics that suggests she may follow her mother into the music business.
Looking back at all her personal problems, Alison believes things worked out for the best in the end. ‘‘The agoraphobia made me stay away from the industry, so I never burned myself out or damaged the voice in a way that lots of people did when they really caned it. I never overstayed my welcome. There’s a lot to be said for saying no. I refused to do things because of my neurosis, but that in a way saved me. I’’m more at peace with myself now. I still have tormented times but they are few and far between. Nothing really scares me any more, other than something going badly for my children.’’
Alison and Vince Clarke briefly met up again for a Yazoo reunion tour last year, and she’’ planning more electronic-pop work with other collaborators, as well as ‘‘a very dirty blues album. Those were my roots, and I wouldn’t mind getting that testosterone voice out again a bit. Like Beth Ditto, I can put a bit of male in my voice – I like that in a woman,’’ she grins.
‘‘To be honest, I’ve enjoyed the career lulls as much as I’ve enjoyed the highs,’’ she adds. ‘‘You reconnect with your family and friends, you live a normal life; it grounds you. Fame and adulation are transient – you should only sing if you’re desperate to sing, because that’s what should drive you.’’
At 48, the honey-blonde who was once operatic-sized now looks so amazingly slinky that she wonders, rather endearingly, whether she has been guilty of ‘‘smouldering’’ too much in our photo shoot.
‘‘My fans would be offended if I posed in a provocative way –– where’s the feminist stance in that? I don’’t want to betray myself,’’ laughs the artist formerly known (in her crop-haired punk days) as Alf.
It’s hard to believe that a quarter century has elapsed since Genevieve Alison Jane Moyet went solo. Once a shop assistant by day and a singer in various pub-rock and blues bands by night, this college dropout became an accidental pop star at the age of 21 after forming the electronic pop duo Yazoo with Vince Clarke, and having an unexpectedly massive hit with her yearning interpretation of his ballad ‘‘Only You’’.
Although the overnight success freaked her out, it led to a solo career as a soul queen with a thrilling contralto voice that has deepened and ripened with age. Alison turned songwriter herself with such top-ten successes as ‘‘All Cried Out’’, ‘‘Love Resurrection’’ and ‘‘Is This Love?’’, sold 25 million records worldwide, won a clutch of Brit awards and confirmed her place in the pop constellation by performing at Live Aid in 1985.
Like all great soul singers, she wears her heart on her sleeve, and she went on to live the blues that she sings, struggling with broken relationships (she has three children by three different men), single motherhood on the road with her eldest child when he was still a toddler, and a fall-out with her record label that prevented her from recording any studio albums for eight years (she changed company after that).
Bouts of manic depression led to a paranoid agoraphobia that turned Alison into a semi-recluse who avoided show-business parties and hid in cupboards whenever a stranger knocked on the front door – until the love of a good man (we’ll get to that later) helped her to face down her fears.
She made a triumphant public comeback in 2001 as the prison wardress Mama Morton in the West End musical Chicago, then in 2002 released the album Hometime, with a sleeve that showed off her square-jawed, big-eyed, Sophie Dahl-style beauty. And she received some of the best reviews of her career for her most recent studio album, 2007’s The Turn, which confirmed her as a survivor who thrives on challenge.
Not bad for the girl from an Essex council estate who categorises herself as ‘‘an aggressive French peasant’’, the youngest child of a working-class French printer and his English wife, who grew up listening to her father’’s collection of Gallic chansons in Basildon, of all places. No wonder she didn’’t know how to fit in. She is the only one of her family to become a professional musician: her brother Clifford runs a specialist beer-importing business in Southend and her sister Jeanne works in agricultural marketing.
‘‘I never burned myself out or damaged the voice in a way that lots of people did. My neurosis saved me’’
There was a time when Alison needed a few slugs of brandy to calm her nerves before going on stage. She says, ‘‘I do a bit less cognac in the wings than I did, because now I feel anticipation as opposed to absolute fear. I feel quite comfortable on stage because it’’s one of the few places, outside my home, where I know what’’s expected of me.’’
Her fanbase ranges from 16-year-olds to 70-somethings, and from straight to gay; she seems to appeal to everyone who appreciates a great, glorious outpouring of emotion served up in that tough-but-vulnerable voice. And with an 80s revival upon us, the time seems right for the release of a greatest hits retrospective and a UK tour this autumn.
As for her surprising new look, I’ve been tipped off beforehand that she has shed a lot of weight. She doesn’t want to go into details because her weight was once a media obsession among the body-fascist diet police, but the 5ft 10in Alison looks so relaxed that she’s clearly happy with her current size.
Although she’’s not saying, she looks to me like a very fit and healthy 12 or 14. Although she had a breast reduction (from G cup to D) back in 1989, she says she is unlikely to succumb to further cosmetic surgery. Instead she looks forward to "the invisibility of age. Women become more interesting as they get older, because they can put everything in context and have a greater compassion’’.
She says that the decision to shed the pounds was nothing to do with vanity but everything to do with preparing for old age. ‘‘I have lost and put on big batches of weight in my life many, many times,’’ she admits. ‘‘But what concerns me is the idea of being an obese old woman, because I don’’t like the idea of being physically incapable in someone else’’s hands.
I have smoked and eaten too much rubbish in my time, but the catalyst for me to do something about it was not wanting to be incapacitated. It goes back to my need for privacy.’’
Alison had no mentor to help her cope with the pressures of overnight stardom for which winners of X Factor-style shows now get professional support. She had to learn for herself and make mistakes along the way. Like a lot of people who have been through therapy, she still seems addicted to it, with a tendency to over-analyse herself and occasionally talk in metaphor. Yet she also makes a great deal of sense, having now achieved a work-life balance that eluded her for years.
‘‘I felt like a square peg in a round hole in the music industry’’
When I first interviewed her two years ago, she said that becoming a mother had been a turning point which ‘‘stopped me from being the centre of my world’’. Her son Joe, now 24 (by her brief first marriage to hairdresser Malcolm Lee), was followed by daughters Alex, 21 (after a short-lived relationship with tour manager Kim McCarthy, which ended before Alex was born), and Caitlin, 13, with her second husband, David Ballard.
‘‘It annoyed my record company when I first become pregnant: a lot of swearing went on,’’ she admits. ‘‘I was 23 and I still think that’’s too young to have children – Joe would have benefited more from having an older mother. But you deal with the cards you’re given,’’ she adds with a philosophical shrug.
After Joe’s birth in 1985, she found herself dragging him around with a bag of toys from one hotel room to another, and still not seeing much of him. ‘‘I realised that this was the height of selfishness, so I stopped touring. It’’s not a child’s environment; it doesn’t suit their needs, so I’m surprised when people say they take their kids everywhere with them.
'But since I’ve been in a solid relationship with David, I’ve been able to work much more. Before, as a single mother, I had one nanny, who worked weekdays for ten years. When she went, I didn’t replace her, because I didn’t want a succession of au pairs and nannies.’’
She met David – a 46-year-old teaching assistant and former social worker for adults with special needs – 20 years ago at the house of her oldest girlfriend, one of the few places where she felt safe during her agoraphobic days. (‘‘I never socialised in the industry –– the only people I would see were my schoolfriends or early band friends from before I became famous.’’)
Another long-standing confidante who gave her a sense of security was comedienne Dawn French, whom Alison has known since she was 21 (and with whom she performed in the West End play Smaller in 2006). As she explains, ‘‘Dawn is someone who is able to work a friendship and put in an effort to the point that we became really connected.
‘‘I was always an odd girl: I had managed to alienate lots of people and wasn’t very employable. So I felt like a square peg in a round hole in the music industry and created a lot of neurosis for myself. And people allowed me to sink further into self-pity by indulging me. 'Meeting David was a life-changing moment because he doesn’’t indulge me at all – which means we live an exceptionally normal life,’’ says Alison, who is now based in semi-rural Hertfordshire, and even keeps chickens.
It was David who finally cured her agoraphobia by dragging her out to football matches (they’re Southend United supporters). ‘‘I found them so joyous –– I just loved the community of being a face in the crowd,’’ she beams.
‘‘David is the great, stable guy in my life. It doesn’t mean that you have this wonderful flawless relationship, because there are still times when you want to poke each other’s eyes out with a big stick,’’ she adds, laughing. ‘‘He is a real fitness fanatic and took me hill-walking for our tenth wedding anniversary a couple of years ago, which was a pain in the a***. But commitment is a choice that you make, it’s not something that falls down like manna from heaven. And he made that commitment.’’
When their daughter Caitlin was born, David volunteered to take on the childcare. ‘‘His relationship with our daughter is fantastic as a consequence,’’ says Alison. ‘‘David is secure in his own masculinity; there’’s no element of him that’s emasculated by being a househusband. And Alex was only a year old when we got together, so David is very much her father as well.’’
‘‘I have lost and put on big batches of weight in my life many, many times’’
The children have done well: Alex and Joe – who was just four when his mother met David – have both gone to Cambridge University, and the science-minded Joe starts a master’s degree in natural computing this autumn. Meanwhile, 13-year-old Caitlin shows an extraordinary memory for lyrics that suggests she may follow her mother into the music business.
Looking back at all her personal problems, Alison believes things worked out for the best in the end. ‘‘The agoraphobia made me stay away from the industry, so I never burned myself out or damaged the voice in a way that lots of people did when they really caned it. I never overstayed my welcome. There’s a lot to be said for saying no. I refused to do things because of my neurosis, but that in a way saved me. I’’m more at peace with myself now. I still have tormented times but they are few and far between. Nothing really scares me any more, other than something going badly for my children.’’
Alison and Vince Clarke briefly met up again for a Yazoo reunion tour last year, and she’’ planning more electronic-pop work with other collaborators, as well as ‘‘a very dirty blues album. Those were my roots, and I wouldn’t mind getting that testosterone voice out again a bit. Like Beth Ditto, I can put a bit of male in my voice – I like that in a woman,’’ she grins.
‘‘To be honest, I’ve enjoyed the career lulls as much as I’ve enjoyed the highs,’’ she adds. ‘‘You reconnect with your family and friends, you live a normal life; it grounds you. Fame and adulation are transient – you should only sing if you’re desperate to sing, because that’s what should drive you.’’
Esta cantante se ha convertido en mi artista fetiche. Encuentro en su voz unos matices que me encantan y me gusta escucharla en cualquier momento
ResponderEliminarY por cierto, cómo le favorece haber adelgazado tanto.
Un saludo
es una cantante impresionante, espero que la delgadez que luce ahora no afecté a su voz. En algunos casos esto a ocurrido.
ResponderEliminar