Stand and Deliver!

"She sounds like a female Jeff Buckley when she sings" was the line from an American review that was the most obvious one to latch onto when approaching the work of Carla Werner, even though, let's face it, beyond his ever-toussleable hair and eminently chuckable chin, Jeff Buckley sounded like a female Jeff Buckley when he sang! When she speaks, Carla Werner is ever the Kiwi; although she moved to Australia at age 19, the ensuing decade has had little effect on her accent. Yet, irrespective of how she feels or what her legal standing may be, now that she has got an international profile in showbiz, she's an Aussie - just like Russell Crowe, Split Enz and the Datsuns.

Early in his writing career, Woody Allen used the description "she had a body that resembled Louis Armstrong's voice". The thing about Carla Werner is that she has a body that resembles her voice. As stunningly beautiful as she is on her CD cover and related artwork, she's even more gorgeous in the flesh. But then she opens her mouth and sings and - if you can get beyond letting it wash over you numb and dumbstruck - you begin to realise that she can sound like Jeff Buckley. She has the vibrato, the range, and the ability to leap from this note all the way down here to that one all the way up there, effortlessy, and back again. She also can sound like Joni Mitchell, and has been likened to "a young Joan Baez", but admits to Buckley’s influence most readily, without wishing to get caught up within it.

The first time I went to see Carla Werner perform, I was introduced to her by some Sony people between sets. She seemed pleasant enough to me, but greeted the woman next to me with a great deal more gusto (a hearty smile, a peck on the cheek, an ensuing conversation). Carla recognised her as the then-struggling writer who had profiled Werner for a free ‘street’ publication some years earlier. (It is to this journalist, a woman called Janine, to whom I owe the insight of Carla’s early collaboration with Paul Oakenfold.) When it came time for me to do my interview some weeks later, I was early and happened to run into Carla in the foyer. Usually the artiste is safely ensconsed in an office before the journalist is announced and brought in. Carla Werner had no reason to recognise me after a brief introduction amongst many such brief introductions between sets at an industry showcase performance weeks earlier, and yet did, and started chatting long before we got the tape rolling and were ‘on the record’. Thus, if it sounds as if I'm going in soft, it's only because there’s no reason to go in hard. Listen to Carla Werner's album Departure for yourself if you get a chance. It’s beautiful.

The interview was broadcast March 13 2004.

Music: ‘Heaven’ - Carla Werner

Demetrius Romeo: Carla, you've been away for the last few years. In that time you've recorded an album and debuted in another country. It almost feels as if you had to leave Australia to make a start to your musical career. Why is this the case?

CARLA WERNER: I didn’t set out to say, ‘right, I can’t make it here, so I’m going to go overseas and make it over there’. It was a step-by-step circumstance that happened in my musical life. I wanted to record an album independently because the labels here didn’t really know what to do with me – in all fairness, I was still in the middle of developing my songwriting style – so I just chose a producer who I wanted to do some work with, and it was John Holbrook, who had done Natalie Merchant's Tigerlily album. We sent some stuff to him and he replied. He said, ‘yep, sure, get on a plane and get over here and let’s do some work’.

Demetrius Romeo: It's interesting that you mention Natalie Merchant, formerly of 10,000 Maniacs; a lot of people have compared you to lots of different singers, and the main ones seem to be Jeff Buckley, also to ‘a young Joan Baez’, and I also hear shades of Joni Mitchell on your album. Which of these seem to make sense to you?

CARLA WERNER: I think, definitely not Joan Baez, because I’ve never really been a huge fan of hers, although I appreciate what she has done for music, as I appreciate all the artists you’ve just mentioned. Joni Mitchell is not someone I listen to on a major scale - I think that her work is amazing and I have two of her albums, Ladies of the Canyon and Clouds and they are really amazing records, to me, incredible songwriting and melody. And of course, the late and great Jeff Buckley, who I saw live at the Metro when he came out to Australia and absolutely blew everyone in this world away. I think, equally, those three artists have brought something new and engaging to music as a whole. I probably would say that I have been more influenced by Jeff Buckley’s work, out of all three of them. But, in saying that, I have a myriad of influences. He’s just one of them.

Demetrius Romeo: What is it that you’re bringing to music that’s different to all of that?

CARLA WERNER: Mmmm. I don’t know if you can really answer that. I just feel like, if anything, I just want to keep creating. I want to do something original, something that’s different to what’s going on in the music world, that people can escape into. I don’t know; one hopes that the music they’re creating is definitely their own individual take on things. And just ‘originality’, I guess. And an escapism for people; a world to escape into and then slip back out of whenever they want to.

Demetrius Romeo: I suppose calling an album Departure does speak a lot of ‘escapism’. How does that feature in your music?

CARLA WERNER: There is definitely a theme of ‘departure’ in the songs – from being in one place of growth and moving through life and life’s experiences, to reach another place of growth and understanding. And also, there's almost a dream-like quality to some of the songs. I am a self-confessed dreamer, I do sit around and I can get lost in my own imaginings and a lot of the work that came out on Departure, especially lyrical content, is testament to that. I am a bit of a dreamer and I do tend to go off into other worlds sometimes. I suppose that’s also just paying homage to the influences I’ve had in my life, such as Kate Bush and Pink Floyd, very much artists who wrote in ‘soundscape’-type ways. It’s a very big influence on my work, I think.

Music: ‘Southern Sun’ - Paul Oakenfold featuring Carla Werner

Demetrius Romeo: A couple of years ago you featured as a vocalist on a Paul Oakenfold album. A lot of female artists, before they become known in their own right, feature on someone else’s track. Sophie Ellis-Bextor did it, Dido did it. Why is this a path to development for a singer-songwriter?

CARLA WERNER: For that song in particular, I didn’t set out to utilise it as being a key thing for me to do in order to boost my career. Absolutely, there are people that know I'm a vocalist through that track, who normally wouldn't listen to the music I create – the danceheads and the ravers. But that was a situation that came about all on its own, and wasn't one that I had any preconception about or that I needed to do. Again, it was just an opportunity that presented itself to me and I found it an interesting task to sink my teeth into, to write something different outside of Carla Werner music. It came about to be that he [Paul Oakenfold] really liked the song and the melody that I’d placed on the music. He used it on the album, which was a really great experience because it then took me off to Top of the Pops in the UK and it then introduced me to Robert Plant, who is a member of one of the best rock ’n’ roll band that has ever existed, in my opinion. And one of my biggest influences, as well.

Demetrius Romeo: The people you have namechecked, like Pink Floyd, Kate Bush and Led Zeppelin, are all distinctive for taking music to the next place. I’m wondering where ‘the next place’ is for Carla Werner, after this album.

CARLA WERNER: Well that's a funny thing because I've been continually writing throughout this whole process. Even when I was stopping and starting inbetween, and doing sessions for Departure and trying to finish that album off, I was continually writing. And the music that was presenting itself – I have a bunch of songs ready to go for the next record and they are a bit more electric-oriented, something I can really sink my teeth into. I just hope that as a song writer I can continually evolve and continually keep writing interesting music. Honest music.

Music: ‘Departure’ - Carla Werner

David Bowie On Film

(Rather similar to the other Bowie piece that I put together for ABC NewsRadio, seeing as how it is based on one major quote from it, and a similar premise. Unless you’ve a bent for comparative studies or some such, there’s no need to read both; if you've already read the NewsRadio version, skip to ‘Off The Record’.)

Having brought so many characters to life in his music, it’s no surprise that David Bowie has been acting for almost as long as he has been singing. However, Bowie's current role is as a family man. Married to model Iman for a decade, he recently became a dad, and his mindset lies more towards being himself on stage and in his music. Likewise, David Bowie seems to have virtually turned his back on acting.

“I’d love to be a movie star and have my name on posters and photographs forty foot high and all that,” he said at his Sydney press conference. “But you’ve got to work so hard at it – the acting, and all that you gotta do. It really takes up time and I don’t think I’ve got a commitment to it, really. I don’t think I’m serious enough about it, and quite rightly, that’s why I’m not offered a huge amount of stuff to do because it’s not my profession.”

Bowie’s first significant film role was as an alien stranded on earth in Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). By this point, having established himself as an international star, Bowie had ‘retired’ from the concert stage and was in need of other creative diversions. Roeg advised Bowie to “just play yourself” and Bowie did just that – his alien was another of the other-worldly characters he’d been playing on stage and on record. Thus, although the plot of The Man Who Fell To Earth was flimsy, Bowie’s acting was quite robust. No such luck with his next attempt, unfortunately, portraying Prussian soldier Paul van Przygodsky in Just a Jigolo (1979). “You were disappointed and you weren’t even in it,” Bowie has said of the film. “Imagine how I felt. It was my thirty-two Elvis movies rolled into one.”

David Bowie is most proud of his performance in the prison camp drama of Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence (1983). It certainly stands up better than his Dorien Gray-like vampire in The Hunger the same year, or his cameos in the ill-conceived Yellowbeard (also 1983) and John Landis’s Into the Night (1985). Bowie’s pantomime turn as Jareth the Goblin King in The Labyrinth (1986) was fun, as was his role in Julian Temple’s wretched adaptation of mockneyphile Colin MacInnes’s Absolute Beginners. However, David Bowie’s born-to-play role was clearly that of Andy Warhol in Basquiat (1996).

Nowadays, Bowie is happy just to accept cameos. “It’s just wonderful if someone like a Scorsese says, ‘do you want to wander on and do Pontius Pilate for five minutes?’ ‘Yes, smashing, what a crack that’ll be just to do that!’ I still choose anything I do on the strength of the director. If it’s somebody that I really admire, or it’s a new guy and I think, ‘he looks like he’d be interesting to work with’, I generally go on that. But Russell Crowe can sleep safely…”

I put this story together from a series of answers David Bowie gave to questions I didn’t have an opportunity to ask, at the Sydney press conference, Monday 16 February 2004. It was broadcast Saturday 21 February. The dialogue is book-ended with the songs ‘Changes’ – yes, a bit crass and predictable, but it actually suits the story – and ‘Try Some Buy Some’. I also managed to recycle info for a FilmInk version of the article. You can also listen to the story as you read.

Music: ‘Changes’ - David Bowie

Demetrius Romeo: David Bowie’s been making music for the better part of forty years. His career has been punctuated by embracing various musical genres – from cockney music hall to glam rock to soul to heavy metal – and his bringing to life numerous characters on stage and on record, including Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane. Now David Bowie’s role is as a family man. After ten years of marriage to super model Iman, David’s a dad again, and, he says, he quite likes the role.

DAVID BOWIE: I mean I only got married because I was in a place that felt right about getting married, so I think that the change in me probably started a lot longer before. You know what I mean? I didn’t get married and suddenly I changed, I felt that I was, uh… I just felt that emotionally and mentally, I seemed to have come to a place where I felt grounded and I understood a lot more about myself and my immediate environment and how things are for me and how I react to things and all that. A lot better than I ever did before: and my writing has taken a turn for the positive, which, I think, if I were not married, and if things were as traumatic as they had been over the last few years, and being at the age that I am, I can quite see that I would have easily have found myself falling over into far more pessimistic, negative, even nihilistic frame of mind in my writing. And I do have to be careful; it’s very easy for me. I really swing. I can vascillate between very good moods and very bad moods, you know.

Demetrius Romeo: It seems that the contentment that David Bowie has with being himself in real life coincides with a contentment in being himself on stage. This is an underlying theme of Reality, his latest album, and his current tour. So, does the absence of the colourful characters on the stage and in the music rule them out of David Bowie’s future work?

DAVID BOWIE: I think it’s wise to say ‘never say never’, but I’m very happy as a performer doing what I’m doing at the moment. It’s never been so clean and so unencumbered with anything. It’s just a very simple performance in that way: I’m up with there with my really, really, great, strong band and we’re just interpreting my songs that I’ve done over the last thirty-five years. But I love writing little theatrical things and I can see it in the future as something I might want to do. Whether I’d be in it or not, I don’t know, these days, maybe not.

Demetrius Romeo: David Bowie has had an acting career running parallel to his music career. But, he says, the acting doesn’t seem as important these days.

DAVID BOWIE: I’d love to be a movie star, you know, and have my name on posters and photographs forty foot high and all that. But you’ve got to work so hard at it, the acting and all that you gotta do. And that really takes up time and I don’t think I’ve got a commitment to it, really. It’s great being offered little cameos now, which is generally what I have always been offered. I’ve had a couple of larger roles. But I don’t think I’m serious enough about it, and quite rightly, that’s why I’m not offered a huge amount of stuff to do because it’s not my profession, and it’s just wonderful if somebody like a Scorsese says, ‘do you want to wander on and do Pontius Pilate for five minutes?’ ‘Yes, smashing, what a crack that’ll be just to do that!’ I still choose anything that I do on the strength of the director. If it’s somebody that I really admire, or it’s a new guy and I think, ‘he really looks like he’d be interesting to work with’, I generally go on that. But Russell can sleep safely…

Demetrius Romeo: One place David Bowie does continue to engage in role-playing is in the performance of other people’s songs. Throughout his career, Bowie has frequently recorded cover versions, and there are three on the tour version of his current CD, Reality. One of them turns out to be an inadvertent tribute to George Harrison, ‘Try Some, Buy Some’.

Music: ‘Try Some, Buy Some’ - David Bowie

DAVID BOWIE: Ironically, I didn’t know it was a George Harrison song. Well, I must have known, but it never went in. For me it was the Ronnie Spector single that came out in 1974. And I knew it was the last – I think it was the last – single released by Apple Records at that particular time before it folded. It was just a phenomenal single. It didn’t do anything because I think Apple had run out of money, so they couldn’t promote it. Sounds like 2004, doesn’t it! I truly love the single; I thought it was just a wonderful piece of work. It was only when I was writing out all the data for the album cover that I recognised it as a George Harrison song. Course it is! It rather poignantly became an homage to George without actually trying… oh, you know what I mean.

Music: ‘Try Some, Buy Some’ - David Bowie