Chickfactor Interview

 

What is your earliest musical memory?
Reading Babar while listening to Maestro's All-Steel Band playing 'Quando quando quando', when I was about 4. And then I actually saw Maestro's All Steel Band in Southampton High Street, which rather destroyed the exotic image.

Do you remember other particular records which your parents used to play?
Yes: the Temperance Seven, their versions of 'Falling in Love Again', 'The Vo-de-o-de-oh Blues', 'Hard-Hearted Hannah'. I did of course model my vocal style on Whispering Paul McDowell. Apart from that, lots of classical records, which my mother liked (she played the violin in an orchestra), and jazz, which my father played. He loved Django Reinhardt and the Hot Club of France. Their 'St Louis Blues' is still one of my favourite records. Also the Modern Jazz Quartet, Dave Brubeck, etc.

Can you remember any specific classical records?
Borodin, Chopin, and Tchaikovsky. The St Matthew Passion, which my mother had on the turntable just about all the time. And all the late 19th/early 20th-century French composers-Poulenc, Ravel, Debussy, Milhaud. In Singapore my parents suddenly became very trendy and bought lots of records. But I don't think they listened to the Beatles, and definitely not the Stones. They did like Francoise Hardy and Sergio Mendes, the Mamas and the Papas, Burt Bacharach, Nancy Sinatra, and Simon and Garfunkel.

What was the first concert or musical performance that you attended?
I can't remember my first concert, but I can remember going to see the Bolshoi Ballet in Singapore. I was too small to see the stage, so someone lent me several cushions, and it was one of the most luxurious theatre-going experiences of my life.

What was your first taste of show business?
I was an angel in a nativity play in Singapore: we had to sing 'Silent Night' and raise and lower our wings in alternate verses. I stood out because I had my wings up when everyone else had their wings down.

Did you have music lessons as a child?
I started playing the violin when I was about six, then when I was ten switched to the piano, but there seemed to be twice as much to do, so I gave up.

What musical instrument would you like to play?
Well, I always wanted to play the guitar. We had an old guitar that my sister and I used to get out sometimes and make up deathless pop songs. I can still remember some of them, but I'm not going to sing them for you.

When was the first time you remember writing a song of any kind?
It was when I was about seven or eight, and it was heavily influenced by 'Heart and Soul'; I think I slightly rearranged the chords and wrote some rather banal lyrics.

When you started discovering music for yourself, or through your friends, what was it?
Well, I think I started listening to the radio; actually most of my friends either had what I considered pretty awful musical taste or they just weren't interested in music at all, so I kind of discovered it for myself. I was an enormous David Bowie fan from the age of about fifteen. And next came the Monochrome Set: I heard 'Espresso' on the radio and something instantly clicked. What happened then was that I started forming a whole new group of friends just because I was very keen on music and my old friends weren't. And I started coming up to London to see bands; who they were we probably ought to draw a veil over.

I don't think so.
Well, Japan, Bauhaus . . . the usual teenage girl things.

I don't think that's anything to be ashamed of .
I have to say in my defence that I never remotely fancied any member of Japan.

David Sylvian was most extraordinary.
Oh he looked absurd. A vain fop.

But Bauhaus were splendid. So which David Bowie record was it that did it for you?
Lodger was the first album I bought.

No one likes Lodger do they, especially? Lodger represented his state of mind at the time, didn't it-he felt like A Lodger. What's on it?
Er, 'Boys Keep Swinging', 'DJ'. I think it shocked my mother, which was the desired effect. There were an awful lot of things that I tried to like because people who I thought were cool liked them, the Fall and the Cocteau Twins for instance.

How many countries have you lived in?
Just England and Singapore, unless a couple of months in Japan count.

How many continents have you been in?
Four--South America, North America, Europe, Asia.

Of the countries that you've been to, which would you most like to live in?
I wouldn't have minded living in Japan for a bit longer. There are a lot of places that I'm glad I visited, but I wouldn't like to have to spend a lot of time in, like Peru for instance. I like my creature comforts and a bit of familiarity.

Which country would you most like to be on a plane to now?
Would this be travelling in style, and with bodyguards?
Yes.
I'd quite like to follow the Silk Road, see bits of China and South-East Asia and a lot more of Europe.

Will you live in England all your life?
Well I suspect I will, though I'd like to think that at some point in the very distant future I'll be able to look back and say that I've lived in lots of different places. Italy, I'd quite like to live in Italy, or Spain. But I like armchair travel much more than real travel.

Are you a city or a country person?
Definitely a city person. I think in the country after a little while you forget you exist.

If you could look out your window every morning when you draw your curtains and see an animal or animals, what would it be?
It would be rather disconcerting. You mean on my country estate, as it were? I think I'm expected to say something exotic, like cheetahs or jaguars, but I'll say sheep. They were the one thing that made a fortnight of hell in a Welsh cottage, seven miles from the nearest telephone box, bearable. They're so reassuring.

What were you doing in a Welsh cottage?
It was the only way I was going to be able to revise for some exams. If not sheep, perhaps chameleons or giraffes.

If you could look out your window and see a flower or tree, what would it be?
Orchids. I like olive trees. Or mimosas. My mother smuggled a mimosa seed back from Greece and grew a tree in her garden.

I like fruit trees. The tree in which my brother and I used to climb most often when we were little was an apple tree.
I think the tree I remember climbing most when I was little in Singapore was a frangipani. They have beautiful waxy flowers with an incredibly strong scent. They're very good to climb and they have a lot of horizontal branches so you can sit on them and pretend you're on a horse.

Until what age did you live in Singapore?
From about five until about eight. It was a real shock coming back to England-I remember going around this market in Singapore and buying what to us seemed like these incredibly heavy-duty Arctic-condition anoraks and fleecy jumpers, except they were all made out of nylon or something, and we arrived in April, a very warm April, which of course to us seemed like Siberia. I remember arriving at Brize Norton--if there's one name that evokes a dreary wet British afternoon it's Brize Norton--and I remember the arrivals lounge there where we sat and drank tepid tea.

So were you one of those girls who are interested in horses?
Yes, I wondered when you were going to get to that. I was absolutely mad about horses. I knew every single bit of the horse's anatomy, the fetlock, the spavin-except I think spavin might be some kind of disease. I think the only thing that could ever entice me to move to the country would be a horse.

So how did your first single come about?
Well, I met Mike Alway backstage at a Monochrome Set gig-I think it was Kingston Polytechnic, I can't tell you which year. At the end of the gig I was standing by the edge of the stage and somebody gave me a watch and said 'Can you give this to Bid?' And so, having a sense of adventure, I thought well why not, and I managed to get past the bouncer by explaining I was on a mission. I ended up backstage; there wasn't a lot of wild rock'n'roll behaviour going on there, I think people were drinking cups of tea. I met Mike; I can't particularly remember what we talked about, but he must have got my telephone number somehow because he rang me up the next day. I think he was going to get hold of some obscure Monochrome Set single for me. When he rang me up the day after we met, he said 'You're brilliant, aren't you? I just knew you were brilliant.' I don't know what this was, some attempt at a chat-up line or something. At that time he was the A&R man for Cherry Red. I knew him for a very long time before there was any suggestion of my making a record. I went to Oxford, and I think it was a few years later after I started working in London that he had this idea of getting me to make a record. Initially Mike just got me to write sleeve-notes. Some of the most pretentious él sleeve notes were by me. I'm not particularly proud of them so I won't tell you which ones they were, apart from the Would-be-Goods', of course. I remember Mike asking me to write a fantasy about being locked in a sweet-shop overnight. He commissioned an awful lot of songs about sweets or cream cakes. Very bizarre.

So did you feel like you were involved in El, before you actually made a record, or were you more like a spectator?
Right through my whole time at university Mike had been sending me tapes, almost on a weekly basis, of stuff he liked--Varese, Ennio Morricone, Robyn Hitchcock, and lots of stuff by bands or people who later popped up on él, like Louis Philippe, but there was really never anyexplanation of who these people were-which was good because I took everything on its own merit. He talked a lot about what was happening with Blanco y Negro, then setting up él, and what he planned to do with it.

So had él been going for a while before you did your record? I think there were two or three odd records, like the Shock-Headed Peters, and then suddenly a whole lot of 7” singles came out at once, which was when my interest perked up because they looked unusual and good, and one of them was yours.
I think you're right about the timing, because I certainly knew the King of Luxemburg's record 'Royal Bastard' before Mike got him (Simon Turner) to write 'The Hanging Gardens of Reigate' and 'Fruit Paradise' (with Colin Lloyd Tucker).

Did you think that this was the start of something big, or did it feel more like a one-off adventure?
It seemed so unreal, I had no expectations at all.

Had you previously displayed any desire to make a record?
Quite early on in my friendship with Mike there was the germ of an idea that I would quite like to try making a record, but it was something that I never ever mentioned because I thought nothing would ever come of it and Mike had never asked if I could sing or if I was interested in it or anything like that.

So was it an odd experience making the record? Perhaps you can't even remember it?
Mike persuaded Louis Philippe and his wife to invite me round to dinner. The other guest was the King of Luxemburg. After a wonderful and extremely alcoholic dinner, they suggested singing some songs while Louis played the guitar. Apparently they reported to Mike the next day that I could just about sing, so he asked Simon Turner to write a couple of songs for my first single. Several weeks later I got a tape through the post, of Simon and his co-writer, Colin Lloyd Tucker, singing 'The Hanging Gardens of Reigate' and 'Fruit Paradise' in a pub. It sounded as if other customers were joining in on the chorus. I was slightly bemused by it all. My first experience of recording wasn't particularly enjoyable-I was so uptight about singing in front of other people that they had to take me to the nearest pub and get me drunk. Simon actually had to hold me up while I sang, and it didn't work out at all well. I re-recorded 'Fruit Paradise' some time later-the producer Richard Preston kept asking me to try and sound sexy, 'like Marilyn Monroe'. As you can hear, I could only manage Julie Andrews. But the single came out and, surprisingly, received quite a lot of reviews and got played on the radio. Some city colleagues of mine heard it and forced me to admit that I was the singer of the mysterious Would-be-Goods. My boss was furious and said 'Either you give up the music, or . . . It's not respectable and it's going to give our company a bad name'; and then a Japanese client of ours rang up and said 'I've just heard Miss Griffin's record, I think it's fantastic', and my boss totally changed tack, went out and bought the lot, and gave them to all his clients.

So that was why it did better than expected. That was probably the beginning of the great Japanese interest in él. So did you say that you thought you could write songs for an album?
Yes, and Mike said, well, do it.

What was the first song you wrote for The Camera Loves Me ?
'Marvellous Boy'.

And this convinced him that you had a future. Quite a good start really.
Well, to use a ghastly cliché, it just sort of wrote itself. It was about something that actually happened, in the Patisserie Valerie.

So you were encouraged. And did they just pour out, the songs?
Pretty much.

So you had some songs, and you and your sister got together with the Monochrome Set . . .
Yes, after a few rehearsals we went into the studio with them. Keith West, the producer, was the frightfully trendy teacher, and we were the sulky adolescent class who didn't miss an opportunity to play tricks behind his back. In retrospect I think he did a pretty good job and was very good-natured about it all. He did not know how he was supposed to take this stuff, and I think a lot of people would have been in the same position.

But perhaps it was all the more enjoyable for having him there to play off. Anyway the record got made, and it seems to have found its niche in pop history, wouldn't you say?
Yes, I'm surprised by the number of people who have heard of it.

Did you enjoy making the record?
I hugely enjoyed the creative side of it, yes.

And were you pleased with it when you'd finished it?
No, I think after it was mixed I stopped being interested.

What, because you thought it was done, or because it was an anticlimax, or what?
I liked the way it sounded in the studio, and then once it was actually an artefact, I think it lost something. I can't really explain that.

With lots of people, what makes them excited is seeing the artefact-they think 'Oh wow, I've made a record', whereas for you it was the sound of the songs when they'd been recorded . . .
No, it seemed take on a bizarre life of its own: the whole idea of people reviewing it and so on was very strange. There was something slightly unreal, slightly preposterous about it.

About it being out in the world, and being taken seriously as a record, and all that-even though you thought they were good songs?
Yes.

And was it well reviewed?
Well, nobody treated it terribly seriously; a lot of people said that it was charming, that it was good in its own way.

I think a lot of people weren't quite sure what to make of él Records at the time, because they thought there was something clever going on . . .
And some people hated that.

Well, some people were turned off by that, but I think a lot of people weren't quite sure how seriously they were supposed to take the stuff. They weren't quite sure what was going on, who all these people were.
They didn't actually think we were real people. Perhaps they thought we were all Mike in different disguises.

And I think some people hedged their bets a bit.
In case it was all a big joke, and they'd look silly.

But nevertheless, I think a lot of people received The Camera Loves Me favourably.
Yes, and I still get the odd postcard, few and far between, from someone who's just discovered it, somewhere in America, who says 'I don't know what to make of this, but I love it', or whatever. And they're the ones who've never heard of él.

I think it's a good thing for people not to know what to make of a record, and perhaps that was a good thing that él did, that people didn't know what to think, it was a new experience . . .
I think at first people didn't know what to make of the records on él, but after a while they stopped looking beyond the él image, once they'd established what that was. This led people to think that it was all Mike Alway, and that he had a far greater creative role in it than he actually did.

He was in charge of the record label, and the record label had a very strong style, and it was presented to the world very much as a set of records, the whole package, not just as individual records. The Would-be-Goods are still, I think, very strongly linked to él Records in people's minds, despite the fact that only half of what you've done has been with them. How did you feel at the time: was it an exciting thing to be part of?
Yes, it was, but at the same time I think I was very much on the fringes of the label, and there was a bit of a division between . . . I think some of the other people on él definitely saw me as someone who was not a serious artist, not a musician, and they were. Also they all seemed to know each other very well: they were very charming and friendly to me and so on, but I didn't really have a lot to do with them outside the studio. So I don't feel was part of the él scene.

Were you involved in the way the record was presented to the world?
Very much so. I'm especially proud of the back cover-a photograph of a fruit punch, which came from a West Indian cookery book of mine.

So how do you feel about the association that people still make now, between your stuff and él; would you rather that it was a bit less strong?
Yes, I would, because I'm really tired of people assuming that Mike was this sort of Svengali figure and we were just a series of disposable personalities. Unfortunately that was something that I didn't do much to dispel at the time in interviews. I'd go along in a very flippant way with the idea that Mike was this sort of puppet master, but people didn't necessarily see that I wasn't serious.

And did you think that it was good stuff that was coming out on él? Were you pleased to be associated with the other music on the label, the look of the records, and so on?
I thought the quality of the records was mixed. The records all looked brilliant, but the music itself was sometimes excellent, sometimes disappointing.

Did you feel the records weren't widely enough appreciated?
Yes, there was actually quite a lot of hostility. People saw it as a class thing. Every review of The Camera Loves Me concentrated on what they imagined my social standing to be, my background, all getting it laughably wrong. Maybe this was something Mike encouraged, because it was a sort of fascination of his. It really irritated me after a while, because it had nothing to do with the music, and made it seem nothing more than a novelty record.

So you were pleased that it got attention, but felt that it didn't get very serious attention?
At the time, and in the UK, no.

I remember the él records, not selling in huge quantities perhaps, but being quite remarked upon, at least in the first year or so, in the first wave. I think by about the second or third wave, people were starting to lose interest a little, expect for those that had really got hooked on one act, or on the whole thing. I think it's part of the price of attracting attention, that a lot of the attention is kind of negative or superficial. I guess the interesting thing with él is that the attention hasn't faded away. It seems to have made some kind of mark; after all, people don't always talk about what label a record was on. Why do you think that is?
It's partly because the rest of the world has caught up with what él was all about and, of course, the amazing marketing and self-promotion of Mike Alway, which gave the label such a strong image.

So was Mike often the person who a journalist would talk to first?
Yes, and he was actually interviewed quite a lot himself. He really was a good self-publicist.

I guess he'd been working in the record industry for a while, and he had a good idea of how to establish a brand, as we would now say.

Some time elapsed before your next record.
A very long time.

Why was that?
Partly because no one asked me; I can be remarkably lazy. But largely because of personal politics. And lots of other things were happening in my life: between the two albums I got married, changed jobs.

Generally when people have made a record, they're keen to continue, but you weren't.
It wasn't lack of enthusiasm--I just couldn't really see where I'd go from there.

Did you continue to write songs?
Well, Mike did once ask me to write some songs for the King of Luxemburg-why, I don't know. So I wrote three songs, and did some demos with Andy Warren and Foz [of the Monochrome Set], but they were never used.

But you didn't want to follow up The Camera Loves Me .
I couldn't imagine the circumstances under which I'd want to make another record.

So did you think that was the end of your musical career?
I think I hoped it wasn't, but I didn't feel like . . . it's very difficult to do anything in a vacuum. I really didn't see any of the people I'd worked with before, apart from Andy, very occasionally, and I didn't have any friends who were musicians. I felt as if that were all in the past.

So how did it come about that you started again? How many years elapsed?
Probably five. Mike got in touch again, and said that Polystar, this Japanese record company he was working with, had asked him to ask me if I was interested in making another record. I'm not sure if that was the truth, or if Mike was just presenting it in a flattering light, but it went on quite quickly from there. I wrote the songs in a remarkably short space of time, as I tend to do. I don't generally sit there writing stuff for a rainy day, but I can write things quickly when I've got a deadline.

There is an idea to the album, as expressed in the title, ' Mondo'. At what point did this idea germinate?
It's not a new idea-you know, Frank Sinatra, Come Fly With Me. And even Lodger!

Mondo is a record which has been scarcely known outside Japan until this year (no doubt it will all change now that Cherry Red have reissued it), though it is in fact even better than The Camera Loves Me, as I'm sure anyone who listens to it would realize, unless they were wrong. Did you consciously take a different approach to making this record?
No, I realized that the songs were coming out differently, but I cannot say why. They were lessarchly humorous-indeed, I now think that the least successful songs on Mondo are the ones where I have tried to be humorous.

'Christmas in Haiti'?
No, I've got quite a soft spot for that one because it reminds me of Christmases in Singapore. 'Trinidad Affair', maybe.

(outraged) But that's really good!
I like the tune, but the lyrics are a bit lame. It was meant to be an alternative take on the 'Fruit Paradise' scenario. I like most of the tunes on the album.

Quite right too. What about actually making the record, did you think 'Let's do this differently'?
When you're not a musician, I don't think other musicians take your input that seriously at the recording stage. This time Bid was producing, and quite often I felt things were out of my control.

As things went along, did you feel happy with the way they were going?
Not always. But it turned out all right in the end.

Of course one difference this time was that you had the talents of Mr Orson Presence to call upon.
I did, yes, and they were very impressive.

In my view, the Monochrome Set all put in a very good performance on that record.
No, I absolutely can't fault it in terms of performance; it's just that some of the tracks ended up very differently from how I'd intended them.

Perhaps sometimes they would get an idea of a style, and run away with it a little bit faster than you would have wished?
Yes-I mean, take 'Casanova 92' for example: I still prefer listening to the demo, where it's just me and Bid playing the guitar in a style which I think really suits the song; it's more dramatic. On the album the whole thing sounds much heavier and more downbeat.

If I had to pick a single word to describe Mondo , I think it would be 'exotic'. Do you think that's a good thing, that someone should react in that way?
I think what would strike me listening to it for the first time is that it's an armchair traveller's album; I don't think you really get any sense of the person singing it having been to any of those places. I kind of intended that: I like the idea of second-hand experience . . .

I guess that's kind of what I was driving at-'exotic' is a word which is only used by someone who is at a distance from what they are describing. Of course you have a song called 'Exotica' on the album, so my thought isn't a clever one. The songs are not just about these parts ofthe world, but about experiencing them as foreign?
There is a sort of theme to it, which I've only realized subsequently. I don't mean to make grandiose comparisons, but what's the Byron thing, is it Childe Harold, the idea of wandering . . .

Do you have any of that wanderlust depicted in such songs as 'Ecuador Days' and 'Gigi Geographic'? There is a sense of restlessness . . .
Yes, it is restlessness-it's definitely not about somebody wanting to go out and get lots of experiences of different places, it's about somebody who feels rootless. Which I do. I don't feel that I particularly belong: I don't feel that I fit into any particular place or culture, although my critics seem to feel that I embody English middle-class . . . whatever.

Not wishing to be too pretentious on your behalf, I think that senseof not belonging is something that quite a lot of people who have made something creatively have felt. I'm not saying that it's a mark of great genius to feel like this, so much as that . . .
It's what drives you to do it.

Well, it can come out in what you make, put it no more strongly than that. So the album starts off with a song very much on that theme: is that a deliberate setting of the tone?
No, it was completely unconscious actually.
Do you think that running order is very important in a record?
I do. Mike Alway determined the final running order of TheCamera Loves Me; that wasn't what I would have chosen at all. Although I now think that it's a good running order.

Yes, it works well-though side one is better than side two.
With Mondo I can't actually remember how we arrived at that particular order. I left 'Run For Your Life' off the Cherry Red reissue; I should never have recorded it, because I felt very uncomfortable about doing it. I don't know why, but I hated doing it, and feel I was talked into doing it that way against my better judgement.

Well, it's well done.
I don't like it at all. It gives me the creeps.

The song is intended to give the creeps.
Well, I don't mind it so much when the Beatles do it.

Of course you weren't the first woman to sing it.
Really?
Nancy Sinatra did it.
I didn't know that. I'd love to hear it.

Well, it's not as good. She's not very good at singing a song straight, and she doesn't.
I can't remember whether it was Tom [Lester Square] or Bid who suggested singing it that way. It's a way I would never normally sing.

Well, I think it's a very effective performance; I mean, I wouldn't say it was one of my favourite things, but if you're going to do the song, I think it's well done like that.
I just think it has particularly unpleasant connotations when it's sung by a woman.

Well it has pretty unpleasant connotations when it's sung by John Lennon! It is a sinister song.

The songs that you've recorded so far have tended to be strongly located, in space or time or whatever: they have somewhere where they take place. They are specific, not general, through use of what in philosophy are called, rather amusingly, 'rigid designators', i.e. proper names.
Oh, I'm definitely a rigid designator, yes.

I think it not only makes them specific rather than general, it lends a bit of distance to a song.
Well, the idea of pouring out my heart in an intimate way in my songs is very alien to me.

I think that the less specific, the more general a song is, the more it is liable to strike an emotional chord with people, the more it will resonate personally, which is odd, but true I think. In a way, the more bland or vague-if you sing 'Baby I love you', someone will think 'Wow, God, that song is about my life'.
I'd be too embarrassed to write like that. Actually, I do increasingly write songs about personal things, but I write about them in a very obscure way. Anyway, I'm not sure that songs have to be general to have meaning for people. Novels and films don't, after all.

I think the first batch of songs had an added element of distance, which was irony or humour; there isn't really very much irony that I can see on Mondo. I don't think that makes one record better than the other or anything, I just mention it. Generally I think irony is best avoided nowadays, but I think it works very nicely on The Camera Loves Me , and I certainly wouldn't wish it to be different in any way. And even without the irony, there is still an element of distance or portrayal on Mondo, with you as observer, or even when it's in the first person and the singer is a participant, it's like a story or scene. So, that record came out on this Japanese label, Polystar, and I don't suppose that very many people noticed it.
No, I don't suppose they did.

Subsequently, there wasn't a total hiatus this time, because then you did some stuff with this fellow Monty. Did Mike suggest that you did some more?
Yes, with the aim of having more songs to fill out a CD of The Camera Loves Me. I wasn't terribly enthusiastic about doing it.

At least a couple of them are good, though don't you think?
Which ones are you thinking of?

Well, as I remember 'Wrong Way Round' doesn't fill me with excitement.
That was Monty's, as was 'By the Light of a Cynical Moon'. I didn't hugely want to put those on; they're good songs, I just wasn't sure if they went with the rest.

'Bayswater Blues' is the best of the batch, I think.
I quite like the lyrics of 'The End of the World', as well.

Both in a rather appealing world-weary vein. When I saw the extra tunes had been added, I thought perhaps it might be rather a bad idea, because The Camera Loves Me is such a good record, but actually now I'm rather pleased that they're on there. How do you feel they fit on?
I don't feel they fit on at all. 'Bayswater Blues' would have fitted on Mondo. That song summed up my feelings at the time, so it probably was one of the most autobiographical things I'd done.

'The End of the World' is not like anything else you've done.
No. I had the tune floating around in my head for a long time; it nearly got onto Mondo. It was meant to sound quite Francoise Hardyish.

Yes, it does. So anyway you came up with those songs to fill the CD out?
Yes, again I had to do those very quickly. As did Monty, I think.

Who is Monty?
I don't know how he came to know Mike; when I came to do this with him he was training to be a barrister, but had been making music for a long time, and seemed to have a lot of friends who were musicians, and I think soon after that went off on a tour of Japan with the Monochrome Set. He was Mike's house writer, after Simon Turner.

Did Mike not want to put 'Hanging Gardens of Reigate' and 'Fruit Paradise' on the CD?
Do you know, I hadn't even noticed that he hadn't. I thought there was something that they'd reappeared on. [The Japanese CD of The Camera Loves Me.]

Why have the Would-be-Goods never performed live?
Because Mike Alway very strongly vetoed it. I think he just thought it would be a hugely embarrassing experience.

Because it wouldn't live up to . . .
I think he just thought that I would not be up to it.

Oh, lack of confidence in your abilities?
Yes, and lack of confidence in my confidence.

I imagined it might be a kind of 'don't dispel the mystique' thing.
That was not the way he put it to me!

Have you ever performed with any other combos?
Yes, twice, and at very short notice, I appeared on stage with Simon Turner, as a backing vocalist.Once at the Limelight in a yellow silk flamenco dress, and once in Japan, when we were immortalized on celluloid by Derek Jarman. Derek Jarman was a friend of Simon Turner, and he just happened to be there that night because he was over there with the Pet Shop Boys. I shudder to think of the film ever turning up.

So you went on a tour of Japan?
No, I didn't, that's the funny thing: I just happened to be there working, so Mike said come along.

Have you felt, as you've been going along, any sense of kindred spirits . . .
I really liked working with the Monochrome Set enormously.

What is your favourite Monochrome Set record?
Probably Strange Boutique.

And song?
'Eine Symphonie des Grauens', 'The Lighter Side of Dating', 'Midas Touch', and 'No Time for Girls', which is odd, because on the whole the later albums don't do as much for me as the earlier ones.

What about when you've heard other people's music, have you ever thought there were people you feel in sympathy with?
No, I've never felt I was 'like' any other singer or songwriter, though I'd sometimes have liked to be.

Are you comfortable with that thought, that you're ploughing your own furrow? I think it's actually quite a good thing for people often not to be in with a bunch of other bands; I think a lot of thepeople who have come up with really good stuff have done so because they felt there wasn't anyone else doing their sort of thing.
I don't think there is anyone else doing the same sort of thing as me, particularly, but I don't go out of my way to be different. I can't see the point of trying to do what someone else is already doing.

Some of the musical reference points people might have in listening to your records would be from the 1960s.
Don't you think that's in the way they're arranged?

Well, some of it, yes, but then there are songs like 'Last of the Pin-Striped Rebels', and we've mentioned Francoise Hardy. If someone said that your music was in a 1960s style, would that seem right to you?
I don't try to write 1960s songs, but a lot of the music I like is from that time. One can't help being influenced.

Who would you most like to have been out of Francoise Hardy, Astrid Gilberto, Peggy Lee, or Marlene Dietrich?
Definitely not Marlene Dietrich-too predatory! Peggy Lee I'm a great admirer of, but I don't see myself as at all like her. Astrid Gilberto sang with very little art but a lot of charm.

People like the sort of naïve quality, which I'm a bit suspicious of, but I think she had a nice voice.
I don't think she sings in a deliberately naïve way, I think she sings fairly straight, and I sing things fairly straight.

Marianne Faithfull in the 1960s sang in a very unadorned voice.
That's exactly it: I really like the way Marianne Faithfull sang 'As Tears Go By', she just sang it very straight and clean. But of course the danger is that that kind of singing can be expressionless.

I think putting expression into singing is not a good idea.
Well I think so too, but unfortunately we seem to be in a minority.

But I suspect you'd find that it you looked at the way good people sing, even in emotional kinds of music, like say Dionne Warwick singing 'Walk On By', very lightly, the expression there is minimal, but she is a fantastic singer of moving songs.

So what's your answer?
Probably Francoise Hardy. I think with Astrid Gilberto one feels that what she does is good, but it only works for one sort of song.

Who would you most like to have been out of Byron, Shelley, and Rimbaud?
Byron, without a shadow of a doubt.

Who would you most like to have been out of Percy Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary Shelley?
Mary Shelley. I think Mary Wollstonecraft was admirable, but a bit forbidding.

What is your favourite song, at the moment, on The CameraLoves Me?
'Cecil Beaton's Scrapbook'. I hardly ever listen to the record, though I play the songs on the guitar often.

And on Mondo?
'Gigi Geographic', possibly, or 'Dream Lover'.

Is there anything that you recorded at those sessions which isn't released?
There were two songs for Mondo which never saw the light of day: one called 'The Gourmet's Love Song' and one called 'The Cool Mikado'. Either through lack of time or lack of inclination, neither got recorded.

Since the collaboration with Monty, you haven't recorded anything, but recently you have hit a rich new vein of songwriting. How has your songwriting changed?
What I usually used to do was to work from a title: I would have a long list of titles, from films, quotations, snippets, whatever, and I would unleash my imagination. But now the process is much more (to use a pretentious word) organic. The big difference is that now I play the guitar, and so I write in a different way. Now I often write the music first, which makes lyric-writing harder but I think results in more interesting tunes.

When did you take the guitar up?
About three years ago, but it's only in the last year and a half that I've played it regularly and written songs on it.

So now you have a system which works?
Yes, and it's much more liberating, not having to get someone to work out the chords with me on a guitar. I always knew what chord I wanted but couldn't necessarily convince my accompanist.

I'm surprised you didn't try to accompany yourself on the piano, just to pick out the chords.
I hated writing songs with the piano, because everything came out sounding like an Elton John ballad.

What are some of your favourite songs by other people?
'Muneca'-Eddie Palmieri
'Maid of Bond Street'-David Bowie
'Whine and Grine'-Prince Buster
'You and a Girl'-Marine Research
'Quand tu t'y mets', 'Anthracite'-Serge Gainsbourg
'Te estan buscando'-Willie Colon
'Sugar High'-Stephen Duffy
'Summer in the City'-The Lovin' Spoonful
'Miss Shapiro'-Brian Eno
'Foggy Notion'-Velvet Underground
'Shop Around'-Smokey Robinson
'Too Much Too Soon'-Desmond Dekker
'Clara'-Jacques Brel
'Rock'n'Roll Suicide', 'Golden Years', 'Queen Bitch'-David Bowie
'The Joker'-Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66
'Liar Liar', 'Smash Hit Wonder'-The King of Luxemburg
'Mecca', 'Louisiana Mama'-Gene Pitney
'If I Can't Take It With Me When I Go'-Eartha Kitt
Most of The Threepenny Opera and Mahagonny-Kurt Weill
'He's So Fine'-The Chiffons
'Mama Didn't Lie'-Jan Bradley
'Sophisticated Boom Boom'-The Shangri-Las
'Boogaloo con soul'-Ray Barretto
'Sunspots'-Julian Cope
'Cold Sweat'-James Brown
'Surfing SW11', 'Mr Bizarro'-The Monochrome Set

I get obsessed with certain songs, play them to death, then move on to something else.

At what time would you have liked to be young?
Possibly the 1950s, but without the smug morality .

What would you have liked about it?
Only the superficial things-I like 1950s fashion, and the obsession with elegance.

That was my next question! What was the best era for fashion?
See above.

Do you like the New Look?
I think it would have been lovely to wear.

It would have been liberating?
No, far from it. I think 1940s utility wear was liberating, but the New Look was actually back to corsets and heavy skirts. But it was very popular because it was so luxurious after all that austerity, it used so much material.

Did you enjoy your spell working in the world of fashion?
Yes, but it was a bit like eating chocolate eclairs-too much of it would be a bad thing.

Did you make any discoveries?
I was given the chance to be the first ever fashion editor to feature John Galliano-but I thought his clothes looked like something out of a dressing-up box. I've revised my opinion since!

What is the best job you've ever had?
Singing and writing songs, of course!

What is the worst job you've ever had?
Don't ask-possibly temping.

If you had to spend a month without books or without recordings, which would it be?
That's really hard. It varies, because sometimes I read a lot of books, and don't listen to a lot, and sometimes the other way round. At the moment, I'd rather do without the books.

Do you have a favourite book?
The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen. And the 'Uncle' books by J. P. Martin-absolutely extraordinary!

If you could have on your wall any painting by any artist . . .
It's in the Accademia, a big Annunciation-I can't remember theartist-I absolutely love it, it really is dreamlike. I'm not particularly religious, but something about itjust brought tears to my eyes. I also love Uccello's George and the Dragon, that has a sort of hypnotic nightmarish quality.

A twentieth-century painting?
Difficult. I'm an admirer of Balthus and some of the German Expressionists. I also once saw an Egon Schiele of birch trees (in Vienna) which I loved, although I couldn't live with most of his paintings.

Would you have liked to be a turn-of-the-century decadent?
I'm the least decadent person I know!

Which actress would you like to play you in a film?
Oh dear, I don't really see myself like that at all.

Oh well, I'll scrap the leading man question then as well.
My mother and I were talking about this the other day, but we came up with really obscure people like Gerard Philipe. Dirk Bogarde-I adore Dirk Bogarde. I admire Audrey Hepburn, but while she was beautiful to look at, her terribly mannered voice gets on my nerves. Leslie Caron perhaps.

In the 19th century, would you have rather been a composer, a poet, a painter, or a dancer?
A dancer. Preferably Russian.

In the 20th century, would you have rather been a great success as: an architect, an arbiter of fashion, a business tycoon, or a film star?
Possibly a film star, but a very shy and reclusive one.

Which would you consider the most risky marital prospect: a fire-eater, a magician, a jockey, or a professional poker player?
A magician.

If you had to earn your living by a manual or physical skill, what would it be?
Calligraphy or palmistry.

What would you say if your daughter wanted to run off and join the circus?
I've already made her a bareback rider's costume!

What is your favourite fruit?
Mango.

What is your favourite drink?
Coffee.

Alcoholic?
Vermouth.

Favourite colour?
Lapis lazuli!

Favourite word?
Ampersand.

Whose films do you prefer out of Jacques Tati, Federico Fellini, and Alfred Hitchcock?
Jacques Tati. Mon Oncle is my favourite.

Would you like to be famous?
I'd love someone to say 'Are you the Jessica Griffin?', but I'd hate to have people camping out on my doorstep.

What time of your life do you look back on as the happiest before now?
I think probably my early twenties. It was a time when I still thought anything was possible.