What did SHARLEEN SPITERI see in Bob Dylan’s eyes?
from Word magazine - October 2003 issue - interview by Mark Ellen
Transcribed by Luc Ghys

IN THE CORNER of this elegantly frayed Camden restaurant we're playing "a bloody sad little game", the same game Texas employ to while away long nights on the tour bus. Round One was name the singing drummers, and we both did pretty well. Round Two was naming bands beginning with A, any failure or repetition and you're instantly out and it's onto B, and we've now reached the slightly more demanding third round, the A?Z of rock acts with albums that start with the same letter. So yes, Aerosmith by Aerosmith, Among The Living by Anthrax obviously ...
"... Abba Gold, Antmusic by Adam and the Ants, Aftershock by The Average White Band. The Ys are good, wait ‘til we get to the Ys." Sharleen Spiteri is clearly ready to return. Her flow of polished pop / soul releases was put on hold for a couple of years while she had her daughter, Misty Kyd Heath, and enjoyed the well?connected lifestyle she built up in the '90s. She's also worked up a new album Careful What You Wish For, some of it exploring the commercial possibilities of dancehall via a collaboration with the North London ragga crew Suncycle. Despite a revolution in the hair department, small children keep appearing to giggle excitedly at her through our window and she waves back at them with a boundless energy. She suspects people will think motherhood has lessened her resolve, that she'll now be writing gloopy tunes about parental bonding or, worse, that her gurgling child will appear somewhere in an ambient mix, but there's little danger of it. "I'm even more driven than before."

Describe your music and how it fits in these days.
Well I remember doing Wogan back in 1989 and telling them not to call us a "pop" band as pop was a dirty word. I played a dirty slide guitar! But then you grow out of these things. Pop was fine for The Beatles. We're a pop band with a lot of soul in the mix. I was brought up on what my mum and dad played. My dad was very rock and country - The Beatles, the Stones, Gene Clark, The Byrds, Dylan – and my mum was Mahalia Jackson, Mavis Staples, Marvin, Al Green. My mum was a window-dresser and my dad was a captain in the merchant navy. He'd always come home in the middle of the night and Id wake up and hear this music blasting Rumours by Fleetwood Mac or whatever and think 'oh cool, Dad's home'. The great record for me was These Boots Are Made For Walking by Nancy Sinatra. It's like 'fuck me, I'm ready for you ... but don't think you're going to get an easy time 'cos I'm definitely the bitch from hell'. Something happened to me listening to that record.

I always see you at Bob Dylan concerts. What's the fascination for you?
I think the passion's still there with Dylan. I've watched him closely onstage and I've run into him a few times. The first time was in Lausanne when we were doing a festival with him and I'm lying in this portakabin and there was a forest at the back and it’d been raining and it was warm and steaming and I was lying there gazing out the window, when there's this person standing in the window with this hooded jacket and I'm going 'piss off’and, oh my god, it's Bob Dylan! And he ran away. I rang up his son Jakob who's a really good mate of mine and said Jake, your father's a pervert! He's standing looking in our dressing room window. Bob Dylan's a window licker! 'Maybe he thinks he's looking through a TV screen at the real world, peeking into other people's lives. But I met him later on and we talked about guitars, 'cos we both play Telecasters, and I was talking about him going electric and what sacrilege it supposedly was, and we talked about Joe Strummer who plays one too, and he was talking about Clash records 'oh yeah, man, I remember when they did London Calling...' But he's naughty. It's in his eyes. He's an absolute charmer. His eyes are just endless pools of vision.

Producers always tell you that most musicians never want to leave the womb like security of the studio and get back out on the promotional circuit.
But I'm quite realistic. I want to sell shit-loads of records. And I have quite a short attention span. I love being in the studio but I listen to the mixes from the room next door so everything has to come through a wall, as that's how other people often hear it. If it cuts through, it'll work. And the thing we've always tried to do - whether it's with the Wu Tang Clan or Giorgio Moroder or Suncycle - is to take some music that might push the boundaries for us and give it a pop sensibility, try and push that pop crossover. And that's what we're trying with Carnival Girl. We're working with a bunch of North London ragga kids who are into this dancehall thing. There's a lot of kids who's have enough of the bling-bling and the Crystal and the living it big. Let's bring it back down to street level. They're ready for rice and peas.

What do your audience want from you?
Mostly, just the music. They're just really really cool people. I got a bizarre letter from someone who sent me some heroin once. Because they loved me. With a note saying ‘you are my heroine'. With heroin in it. I remember one time sitting in a dressing-room and the door bursts open and there's some French guy in a top hat and cape with a bible in his hand and he's like 'I must speak to Sharleen!' And two sets of hands, security, come round the comer just grabbing him and he's hanging onto the door frame. 'We met in a former life!' Enough’s enough. We didn't meet in a former life. See ya.

We ran a photo quiz once in a magazine of bands with girl singers with the singer in silhouette - Texas, Blondie, Garbage, Cardigans etc - the suggestion being you’d never recognise the other members as they're effectively invisible.
But they don’t care. It happens. A lot of people can't name another member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers apart from Anthony Kiedis. Listen, my band are realistic. At the end of the day I'm called the front person 'cos that's my job and I'd be a bit worried if people were talking about anyone else but me. I got followed by a four-by-four vehicle with some bloke trying to take a picture of me and my daughter yesterday and when I told him to piss off he said 'alright but [pointsl there's another guy parked just over there'. My band don’t get followed if they go out to buy a pint of milk so they don’t care. And you mention Blondie. Look at Debbie Harry, part of the reason she's never got the props she deserves is because she's so bloody good-looking.

How does it feel to have been on Stars In Their Eyes three times?
Yes, three times. One girl did Say What You Want, another girl did Black-Eyed Boy and Gabby Yorath did Celebrity Stars In Their Eyes and did Say What You Want as well. I love it. It's the highest compliment you can pay me. I couldn't believe it when David Brent started talking about us in The Office. I leapt twenty feet in the air and was, like, running round the bed going I’m so famous!' I love it! The bit where Ricky Gervais is impressing his workmates with tales of his former rock glory and reveals his band once supported Texas and he says 'I taught them everything they know. Could they do what I do? Run a paper company in Slough? I don't think so. Get the guitar!'

Where did your daughter's name come from? 'Will she have to go to a special school where everyone has rock-offspring names like Wolf'?
Oh, come on. I mean I grew up in Glasgow with an Italian father and his mother's French, and my mother's father's German and her mother's Irish - and I was Sharleen Eugene Spiteri and it never did me any harm. I mean, please. I thought does my child want a funky name and I thought, yeah I'll give her a funky name. Misty is from Play Misty For Me and the Kyd is from Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid which is my favourite soundtrack and I was playing it while I was in labour. And Misty Heath is pure Kate Bush. And we love Kate Bush.

You seem phenomenally well-connected. Thierry Henry announced your child's arrival with a message written on his vest in a televised Arsenal game.
How cool was that? God I'm going to sound as if I've got 'rock memorabilia' written all over me here but our nanny's done a book for Misty and the first picture in it is me about eight months pregnant and David Bowie's standing with his hands on my tummy. We went backstage to see him and he says 'I love babies!' and grabs my stomach and somebody took a snap and sent it to me. So the opening is Bowie with his hands on my stomach and the next page is Thierry Henry with 'The New-Born Kyd' on his vest. But I have met some unbelievable people. Madonna I know and we've been over for supper and stuff. She's a very real woman and we talk about babies and the people we've worked with. She's a really good mum. I met her through Stella McCartney who's a really good mate, and I met her through Paul. I was in New York and got a call from Chris Evans and he's like 'We're doing a special on Paul McCartney and he wants you on the show' [slack-jawed astonishment] and I flew back and did a Marvin Gaye song. And I'm rehearsing, just sound-checking, pissing about singing with a lollipop in my mouth, and at the end there's applause. And out of the darkness, Paul McCartney. He said 'why are you laughing?' I said ‘I’ve never been applauded by a Beatle before'.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR by Texas is released in October


Back to the Articles page

Back to the Articles & Concert Reviews main page

If you don't see a toolbar on the left then please click here