Texas Campfire Tales

In the early 1990s Michelle Shocked had a critical and commercial success with her album Short Sharp Shocked. I spoke to her about the legacy of the album and her ongoing conflict with the music industry.

Peter Machen: Hi Michelle. You are well known for your critical position on the music industry.

Michelle Shocked: The global music machine is designed to get you in, they blow you up and then they abandon you. Because if they developed you and you continue to develop as an artist you would get too much power. And, once you have too much power, you start telling them what's wrong with the system and how to make it work on behalf of artists and audiences. And the system’s not supposed to work for artists or audiences – it’s supposed to work for the record machine.

PM: But don’t you think that now audiences and artists are taking the power, and it’s a different kind of power that the record industry had.

MS: Yeah, and you can see it’s a messy process. And we can see it right now in to talking about the Egyptian Revolution. Yeah, they are transforming but it’s very mess. We just had our political theatre with the debt-ceiling crisis. And now wheeling Mubarak into a cage is not really the change I was looking for there. But we’ve got some struggles ahead of us as well. But I’ve always understood that the relation of an artist with the world is Marxism 101. The means of production, the conflict between labour and management. It’s all coming to fruit.

But I’ve also known that the real point of the exercise is to be the last woman standing. I’m from an era, a generation where I will have a history that is much broader than artists today. They can’t catch up – 5 years, 10 years – 25 years it gonna be, next year I think.

PM: Well, I was sixteen, no I think I was seventeen, when I heard 'Anchorage'. It did something to me, and I immediately bought Short Sharp Shocked. And then the first record I bought on import was the Texas Campfire Tapes.

MS: And now with the Internet, which didn’t even exist then, kids wouldn’t even understand what that meant – to buy on import at a time when South Africa was completely isolated. So we get to tell that history, we get to remind kids of what came before. Because if you don’t know your history, what do you do know?

PM: There’s a beautiful Springsteen bootleg – he’s talking before a song. And he talks about listening to music when he was a kid. And about hearing these slices of other possibilities, of other worlds, just outside of your own constraints.

MS: I feel that when I hear music.

PM: Me too. And especially with Short Sharp Shocked, it did so much on a personal level, to give me that sense of possibility and elsewhereness and bigness, especially living in South Africa then. It was horrible, you know.

MS: Yeah, I’ll be doing a tribute show with David Kramer and he’s talking about what the possibilities were here. “It was the decade of the sputnik. It was the time of the H bomb. It was the time of apartheid”.

PM: You and David will work so well together. I can see it.

MS: (Laughs) For me, I gave a poetic voice to a place that few people travel to, you know it’s not a tourist destination, East Texas. But when I sing about it, you feel like ‘Ah, I know what she’s saying?’

PM: I feel like I grew up there. Where I grew up is now all commercialised now, but it was semi-rural and I also learned to drive on those old roads.

MS: Yeah. Yeah. People have actually travelled there and stood outside the city limit by the sign ‘Gilmer’ and sent me the photo. (Laughs)

PM: Well, how do you feel about all that now?

MS: I was always cynical about fame. To me, fame was a manufacturing process. It wasn’t something to base a sense of reality on. Even growing up, popularity seemed liked like such an important value to people. And I recognised early on that the things you have to do to achieve popularity are not worth having the power. But if you do it right, it’s so subtle and so un-obvious that it takes a very discerning eye. So I say this, you get the audience you deserve. And that’s not to say it’s based on numbers but the quality of people – people who really listen.

PM: I want to interject there. I think of Curt Kobain and also Springsteen. You’ve got a different kind of cult of personality, for lack of a better word.

MS: OK, that’s a good word for it.

PM: But you know, people still think that Springsteen is an American nationalist, and there are all the people who never got Kurt’s whole anti-discrimination and anti-prejudice agenda. And I don’t think that’s a problem for you, but is...I just always find it so weird when people don’t listen to the lyrics.

MS: I understand. But you know – I blame Springsteen for the ambiguity. It’s like in the old theatre tradition you had a Greek chorus. And the actors would play out the drama, but the Greek chorus would come in and they would reiterate the theme. And if you think about it, the Greek chorus was the counterpoint to what the actors were doing. So, Springsteen’s main anthem was ‘Born in the USA’. Well those words came out of his mouth. Same thing with Curt Kobain, you know. Sarcasm and satire only go so far. It’s very limited.

PM: I remember on the back cover of Arkansas Traveler, you spoke about wanting to dress in black-face for the cover and feeling ambivalent about it, cycling through all those political constraints.

MS: Exactly. I don’t mind ambiguity. I’ve created a different problem for myself. My problem is that I am quite famously progressive socially but over the last ten years there’s also been a fundamentalist Christian strain. And people’s concept of the two have never met before. They’ve never seen the embodiment of two such disparate sensibilities.

PM: But at the same time – I mean, I’m not a Christian but I grew up with a Christian background. And my mother is very, I want to say, genuinely Christian. But my point is surely that if you really engage with that theology properly, you’re going to get to the socialism, you’re going to get to the anarchism. Read the words of Christ...

MS: I feel that way. But then that goes back to the function of religion. What was it Gandhi said? “When the emperor embraced Christianity it became a religion of empire”. So yeah, politicians will always use religious theology for nationalist purposes. But I don’t give it to them. I don’t allow that, so far as I can fight it.

PM: I presume that you’ve always been quite a spiritual person...

MS: By nature I am.

PM: And I’m sure there’s a strong link between your spirituality and your politics. And we’ll talk about that. But was there a point at which you had an actual religious conversion to Christianity?

MS: Yes, there was. But it was very similar to my embracing an anarchist identity. All my life, I found it very easy and fluid to adopt or embrace an identity. I conceive of myself as a blank canvas, and I work really hard to keep it blank, so that I can paint whatever I want on it. I’ve never had a sense of identity that was fixed. That’s why, when you encounter the fame machine, it’s laughable. Because they need you to be a certain persona and stay that way, fixed forever, into eternity. And I don’t think I ever agreed to that. (laughs)

PM: I’m very much caught up in this idea of the old world and the new world that we are moving towards. But for a long time, there was this idea that you grew up and when you were 17 or 18 or 19 or 21, you were finished, complete.

MS: Right. You had your rebellion and then you settled down and followed the pattern, yeah.

PM: I don’t think it was ever valid, but I think it’s becoming more and more invalidated.

MS: Good, one more myth to be exposed. That’s good. Yeah. “When I grow up ... I want to be an old woman”.

PM: That’s such a good protest song.

MS: I like that you say it’s a protest song.

PM: But in a way I think all music is protest, personally you know , against whatever.

MS: Yeah, I always embraced the blues because I said ‘OK, what you’re singing about is very sad, but the point is you’re singing ,so how bad could it be?’

PM: It was so nice to walk in here during the sound-check and see you playing ‘VFD’. How do you feel emotionally about those songs from 25 years ago.

MS: Well, maybe if I was playing for 25 years with the same musicians, it would be the same song. But every night it’s born new, because I’m in the present, experiencing the songs with my band members, Kevin and Melissa and Schalk. I mean, if you have a piece of clothing but you put it on different people, you’re not going to say that the person wearing the clothing is defined by the clothing. So that’s how it feels to me with the songs. Everyone who plays one of my songs is hearing a different song.

PM: Well, I like this shirt but I could say that the last time I wore it, it wasn’t the same shirt - You can’t step in the same river twice.

MS: Yes, that’s quite suitable. That’s a western-style shirt you’re wearing, by the way. I think the embroidered flowers might be a particular touch, it might get your ass kicked in Texas. But you can get away with the pocket arrows, and the parole buttons and uh...you add a belt buckle..and you got it going on. And then you can sing an older western song called 'Don’t Fence Me In'.

PM: It’s a western song? I always thought it was a Cole Porter tune. I love that song.

MS: Well, you know what, it may be that it was written by him – because you know he wrote a lot of Broadway and theatrical songs. The thing about that style of song-writing was that it was just that it was how he arranged it, and it could take on other identities, and become identified with rolling tumbleweeds and, you know, saguaro cactuses – don’t fence me. Yeah, its always identified in my mind as prairie cactus song.

PM: The frontier.

MS: Yeah.

PM: Did you ever see that movie – I mean it’s not a great movie at all – but Seabiscuit.

MS: It’s about a racehorse that won the Kentucky Derby? Yeah.

PM: The opening scene of the movie for was me was the only really good thing about it. Chris Cooper plays a cowboy at the end of the 19th Century – or maybe the beginning of the 20th Century – and he sees his first barbed wire fence.

MS: Aah...

PM: And he’s just heart-broken.

MS: Wow.

PM: It’s a lovely scene. The rest of the movie is quite mediocre.

MS: Yeah. That’s a good opening scene – heart-broken at your first barbed wire fence. Yeah, that’s like what we said – that 17, 18-year old phase when you realise that the boundaries are ready to be broken and you’re not ready to be corralled in.

PM: And I never will be. Haha!

MS: Never will be.

PM: I want to ask you this, and this is very personal. Because something always struck me about you, without really reading much about you – was that there was a great sense of hurtness....

MS: hurtness?

PM: Yeah, of being hurt by the world and...

MS: I’ve always been sensitive. But it was a cultivated sensitivity. I wanted to feel. I wanted to have a sense of my own fragility, my own vulnerability. I even amped it up. I put myself in dangerous situations. I had more courage than I had judgement...(laughs)...so you know, it could be that I subjected myself to abuse, and then wanted to be surprised that it hurt. (laughs).

PM: I’m sure you’re not alone there.

MS: You know, I’m made for drama.

PM: But, yeah, I mean, people get addicted to drama, even on a deeply political and spiritual level.

MS: Yeah, and that’s where the motivation to keep whipping yourself comes from. But it goes aways – you do mature at a point and say ‘I can be loved. I can be safe. I can receive the things I need’. But it doesn’t have to stop there.

PM: I want to ask you about 'Anchorage'. Did it ever feel – because it was the big hit – that it was a weight around your neck.

MS: No the opposite. It’s mystical. It’s a song with such a pure seed that it...like I was saying about playing with different musicians – it continues to expand. It’s just...it’s infinite. It’s been a wonderful journey to have as the centre of light, the source, so something so beyond my comprehension. The first person that played that song when I wrote it said to me “you may not realise just how great that song is.” And you know, as a writer, you say, “you know what, I do know. I do know how great that song is.” Because I can’t live in it. It’s got a resonance that will continue to expand infinitely. And thank God. Because the obstacles and the challenges that I have put in front of myself to limit my own artistic growth depends on a song like ‘Anchorage’ to carry me through all of the obstacles. So it’s yeah, it’s my signature song.

PM: Your key.

MS: Yeah.

PM: It’s the only song my mother knows.

MS: And I think it’s one of those songs you hear it, and it stays with you, whether you know the singer, whether you know the whole thing.

PM: It’s magical. I mean I listened it this afternoon for maybe the 5000th time, and it still sounds fresh, new and immediate.

MS: Yeah, I’ve heard other artists talk about certain albums where everything just comes into alignment. And in my case, I had not listened to enough outside music to know what I was being processed through. Because the producer said to me ‘Yeah, we’re going to do this like Blonde on Blonde.’ And I said ‘huh?’ And he said ‘yeah, we’re going to play it like The Band’. I didn’t know what his agenda was – I didn’t have those references. So, that’s a good thing.

PM: And now I can go to HMV in London, and browse through the 50 greatest albums of all time, and there’s Short Sharp Shocked and Blonde on Blonde. That’s pretty nice, hey, regardless of ego or pride or whatever.

MS: It’s wonderful. It’s wonderful. I know it seems impossible that an artist could conceive of a work like that. But I really believed at the time, that the limitations that I gave the producer were to keep the album from being overproduced.

Because I knew I would be playing it for a long, long time. And I even had the sense of an arc of a career being fat and lean. So I knew I had to create an album that would carry me through seasons of doubt. So I told the producer: “Of these 10 songs, on 5 of them you only get one other instrument. Right?” So he chose the five songs that had an extra instrument very carefully. And he did a very good job of choosing the particular right instrument. ‘Graffiti Limbo’ was harmonica. ‘L&N’ has a little banjo in there. ‘Black Widows’ got the hammer dulcimer. ‘Memories of East Texas has got the violin’. So he was very sensitive to all that. And the biggest surprise on that album was in ‘Anchorage’ – I had never heard of this before, but he was going to put the Fairlight in. And it was in the early days of computer effects – I didn’t know what a Fairlight was (laughs). And I was ready to have a fight. And he turned the tables on me, because he said if your instincts tell you not to have a Fairlight we won’t use it. And I’ve always wondered in retrospect if he didn’t secretly put the Fairlight in. But what he told me gave me confidence to stand up for my vision as it was.

PM: And how do you feel about the first album - Texas Campfire Tapes? It really wasn’t produced at all, hey?

MS: This is the 25th Anniversary of that album. It came out in England in 1986. And uh...even the liner notes were problematic. For example, I’ll tell you about some hypocrisies with the album. When I hear Pete Lawrence referred to as the producer on the album, I’m always quite adamant to refer to him as a bootlegger but journalists always modify it and call him a producer. He had never produced anything. And more significantly, when he approached me with his tape recorder, it was in the context of “do you mind singing a few songs into my tape recorder. I write for a magazine in England called Folk Roots”. Does that sound like a producer to you. He presented himself as a journalist.

PM: At what point did he tell you that it would be released as an album?

MS: After the record had been released.

PM: What?

MS: No, it’s no shock. You know, when you talk about the politics of it, people’s reaction is not outrage at my rights being infringed. People’s reactions are “Isn’t it terrific that he made you famous. Because you didn’t have a destiny. You didn’t have a future. You didn’t have an identity. Look what he did for you.” And that’s why you have to be the last woman standing. I guarantee you that every artist that has walked the face of the earth has been subjected to this.

The song I’m writing right now is a tribute to Billy Holiday. And I needed to get to the source of one of her most famous songs, which is ‘Strange Fruit’. And it is well known that she was not a composer. She covered songs. I had a suspicion – and I confirmed it – that ‘Strange Fruit’ was written exactly like a Cole Porter song. It was written by what was defined or described by journalists as a schoolteacher. But this same schoolteacher adopted the children of Julius Rosenberg when they were in prison for their communist activities. So whether you say a communist, an organiser, an activist or a schoolteacher – the modifier that she used to describe someone’s role – the point I’m making is that they were trying to get to the issue of who composed that song.

And in the biography Lady Sings the Blues, they got the facts so wrong that it caused a lot of complications for the purposes of copyright. And when they asked Billy Holiday herself “well didn’t you say in your biography that you wrote the music to this poem that this schoolteacher wrote? You caused the confusion”. She says “I ain’t I ever read that book. That book was ghostwritten.”

And even though I have been alive to tell my story, in essence my story has been ghostwritten. Even though I’m the subject standing here, saying “No! It didn’t happen that way, it happened this way”. And in my presence, I see my own story taken away from me. It’s quite phenomenal.

PM: Is that a metaphor for how things generally work?

MS: I guess it’s like how they say a picture is worth a thousand words. And once an image is indelibly imprinted in someone’s mind, it doesn’t matter what you do to modify the image, that image is going to hold.

PM: So, from what I gather, like a few contemporary artists and artists from your generation, you are taking control of your own royalties and copyrights and things. Are you releasing your own stuff now?

MS: Well, when this bootleg was released in England, it caused such a stir, that Polygram Records came to me, asking me to sign a recording contract.

Now I’m one of the only artists, if not the only artist I know who didn’t ask for this job. So when they came to me, asking me to make a record for them, I had turned the position of power on its head, and I dictated to them the terms of the contract based on my political activism.

And my activism had taught me a few things: that when people are offering you a lot of money, don’t be confused –. That money is designed to enslave you. I always compare it to that African story of how to catch a monkey – put the peanut in a jar and they won’t let go. So I knew that the money they were offering me was a smokescreen for bondage, for oppression.

And why would I give away my freedom for a free shekels of gold? So that was one political principle. Another political principle was that to get this consciousness there had been so many artists before me who had learned the lessons of history, and that I was now standing on their shoulders.

And so I honour them by explaining that the Dead Kennedys, punk rock, etc was already in place. And remember, that was a cultural revolution. And I had experienced it as an activist, not as a musician. Confronting apartheid, confronting the cruise missile bases based in Europe. There was a time when I was a squatter. So there was already channels of independence being manifest, and so I told them “you know what keep the money. I want to own the masters.

At the end of this contract, when our relationship is over, I owned the masters. And that turned the whole thing on its head. Because you discover in a power relationship that a contract is meaningless. Its...I mean anyone whose been subjected to colonialism...treaties, agreements, contracts – who’s got the gunboats?

And so, seven years later, when this contract came to an end, their strategy was to hold me hostage basically. They wouldn’t let me record, but they wouldn’t let me record through anyone else. So I had to stand on my constitutional rights as an American prohibiting slavery. And here’s how the dots connect – because as soon as they released me from the contract, the rights to those masters returned to me.

So what didn’t happen in my country with the abolition of slavery – every freed slave was supposed to get forty acres and a mule – and that didn’t happen. But in my case, I had the rights to those masters. So I own an album that is one of the 50 albums of all time,

PM: One last question. Is it important for you that you are here in South Africa?

MS: We have a very interesting relationship because Polygram, who signed me, was a subsidiary of Phillips, and I knew that Phillips was heavily invested in South Africa and that there was a cultural boycott at the time. So the contract also stipulated that there was not to be an album release in South Africa during the boycott. And of course all they did was they outsourced it to another distributor.

(We look at the English and South African versions of the Short Sharp Shocked record, both of which I have brought with me to the interview)

So Teal. That’s what they did. This was essentially a bootleg. And I didn’t get paid royalties on it because it wasn’t supposed to be released in the first place. And when I found out that it had been released here, in spite of the agreement, I tried to stop it. It was like some epic battle. But my manager basically folded – he sold me out.

Then, years later, in 1993, when Mandela was free from prison, he came to the United States for in a fundraising drive. And Polygram had promised to contribute the South African profits from Short Sharp Shocked to the ANC because they had violated the terms of the contract. But then they totally reneged on the deal. So then I took that money myself and I got to meet Mandela when I made a contribution. I didn’t do it to meet him. I was “like here’s a contribution”. (laughs).

MS: But I’ve also heard from South African audiences how important it was that that audiences got to hear the album.

PM: It’s a selfish thing, but I’m so glad it did. It’s a difficult argument, particularly in the light of history,

MS: All’s well that ends well. Well, really the spearhead for that was Graceland. And Paul Simon is one of my seminal influences.

PM: I think Graceland had a huge impact on people. It was the first record I ever bought. And it’s still one of my favourite albums

MS: Hearts and Bones was the first one I bought.

PM: Michelle, thank you so much.

MS: It’s a pleasure.

PM: And thank you not just for now, for the last 25 years.

MS: We got a thing, don’t we. Yeah.

PM: When I was 17, I wouldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams that I would have got to talk to you. And now it just seems so natural and normal.

MS: Good. Yeah. Well you conducted yourself with dignity and aplomb.

PM: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.