Who Knew?

Why you might want to use your free read option on today's published P. J. Harvey interview and some extracts from my memoir in progress.

So it’s early spring 1992 and we’re sitting in singer-songwriter Polly Harvey’s north London bedsitter chatting, just she, me and, photographer Mary Scanlon. It’s full of incense smoke. A few vintage dresses in black and white hang like works of art. Her passport is open on the mantelpiece. A copy of a collection of essays and poetry by the writer Susan Griffin is propped up against the bookshelf. A poem about the insides of a woman coming out as she lies in her bed is marked in pencil, saying “copy out”.

      “We’re chatting about the usual things which interest ‘us girls”, I write. “Jimi Hendrix, Peggy Lee, Muddy Walters, Billy Holiday, Beefheart, Zappa, and lest we forget Screaming Jay Hawkins. We all agree it’s a shame Slint split after the grand debut LP, Spiderland, back in 1990.” (SIREN music magazine, 1992) 

      This is part of the transcript of my feature interview with singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, sculptor, photographer and poet P. J. Harvey, re-published today on Substack. I am on a roll with my agenda for writing. I know full well that the majority of people, at that time, would not assume music to be a go-to conversation for girls. 

     I was invested in Harvey because she ticked numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 of my personal and professional agenda for writing (and the framework for my memoir in progress). 

      Six months ago my short review of the P. J. Harvey trio @ Sausage Machine, White Horse Hampstead, was published in the Melody Maker Lives! section. “This time next year you’ll wonder how you ever lived without P. J. Harvey”, proved to be an under-estimation. Five months ago Harvey’s debut single met with critical acclaim. Its follow-up ‘Sheela-Na-Gig’ is out now, and the release of an album Dry is imminent. Harvey has yet to sign with Island Records or play at Reading. Perhaps she still thinks studying sculpture is the priority; the original reason for moving to London from Somerset. 

      These early recordings were on the independent Too Pure label. DIY CEOs Paul Cox and Richard Roberts were also the promoters of Sausage Machine nights at the White Horse, Hampstead, a weekly haunt of mine scouting for bands to review for the Melody Maker. That’s why I had a white label vinyl of Dry and John Peel knew my name. I felt part of the Sausage Machine community, who also played and drank at the Falcon (and other north London venues within a three-mile radius of my front room, where fantasy and reality intersect nicely and where Frank the Cat was waiting). The policy was: if you played at the venue you didn’t pay to get in to see other bands. Everyone was in a band. I loved 1991 and 1992. 

      “What do Lush, Damon of Blur, Silverfish, Th' Faith Healers, God Machine, the Rockingbirds, Swervedriver, Milk, 5.30, Sun Carriage, The Honey Smugglers, the Butterflies, the Hinnies, Head Cleaner, Hippies with Muscles and Head Butt have in common? They all drink at The Falcon.” (They Came They Saw They Camdened, ‘The Clubs, the Lads, the Labels’, Ngaire, 6th April, Melody Maker). 

      I loved striding from one venue to the next, Sausage Machine, Vertigo Club, the Bull & Gate, and the Monarch… when KOKO was called the Camden Palace (previously the Music Machine); the playlist, band or artist on my Walkman, the soundtrack to my movie. 

I am on the guest list in my own right and my real name, Ngaire. There is no ‘lack’ of boyfriend, or friend (s) – no one ever asks if I’m ‘waiting for somebody’. I am glad not to be identified by my ‘lack’ of anything. 

(Taking Control: Manifesto of a Girl Music Journalist in the 90s Chapter title: First Came the Witches, p. 25)

      NW5 has a history of cool and its scene in the early 90s was no different except that I was in the middle of it and writing for the mainstream music press, which covered underground bands. I knew all about OZ magazine at the Roundhouse, giving out sugar cubes, allegedly, laced with acid, Happy Mondays at the Black Horse… It’s likely because of the district’s legacy in the story of indie and rock music I was encouraged to review “bands with stupid names”, (Allan Jones, Melody Maker editor, in every editorial ever), for short reviews in the Lives pages, supporting the even-more-famous Classifieds. The section took up two or even three spreads within the weekly paper; the readership (the majority, 16-year-old boys) saw themselves or their fantasies reflected back at them.

      The Too Pure men re-mortgaged their homes to sign P. J. Harvey. If I recall, fondly, the label’s first release was a celebration compilation album Now That’s Disgusting Music, which included Harvey. The myth goes that when the album’s launch party gig was announced on LBC radio, the DJ commented: “What sort of people go out to hear disgusting music?”  

      My sort of people. 

 Setting: in conversation with the Melody Maker’s Studd Brothers, who are not brothers.

   “You can’t be friends with people in case you have to review them, and they’re shit,” explains Dom, half-jokingly. 

   “They ARE going to be shit,” elaborates Ben, at full volume.

(Taking Control: Manifesto of a Girl Music Journalist in the 90s Chapter Title: Meeting My Maker p.7)

The project, Taking Control: Manifesto of a Girl Journalist in the 90s (in progress) includes the story of the live gig (I reviewed), and the subsequent interview (published today) which set me on a professional and personal journey. Her response to tricky questions demonstrated a girl with the wisdom of a crone; this was a desirable character trait. Was this her nature? Part of her upbringing? Experience? I decided, on the reasoning of the first two. My admiration grew as I watched Harvey negotiate the life cycle of a female pop star with autonomy over her media narrative. 

      The memory is not the real story though, just the situation or settings for the story. This story is older than the hills: the pain we cause ourselves, through anxiety and fear; the power of kindred spirits, music and poetry to provide self-love; the broken self that creates a quest as a tool for survival. And now, in the telling, more sinister connections are growling from the sub-text.     

In her memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal, (2012) Jeanette Winterson said that you “… must have a home to leave home, and if you didn’t ever experience home, you never really knew which way was up” and it struck me that was my experience. I had no home to leave, just the house we lived in for a couple of years, after the last one we lived in for a couple of years, before the last one. And then, as soon as my O’Levels were over my parents moved to Sweden - and left me without so much as a tea towel. I was a floating character in a Chagall painting. Someone told me that if I wanted to be a music journalist I would be 25 forever. I couldn’t see the catch. 

(Taking Control: Manifesto of a Girl Music Journalist in the 90s Chapter title: First Came the Witches, p. 23)

Neither the archived interview published today nor the original review is in the memoir (1989-1993 pre-Riot Grrrl), or the rest of my Polly Harvey herstory. By the time 1992 was over I’d blagged my way into uni with six O’Levels by writing two essays titled ‘Crossing Boundaries’ and the ‘Spectacle of Female Hysteria on the Stage’. I had no idea how pretentious I was. I’m “just a working girl”, (as sung by guest vocalist Polly Harvey in Moonshake's song ‘Just a Working Girl’ from the album The Sound Your Eyes Can Follow, released in 1994). I have to get clever and learn the ‘isms’; it’s necessary if I wish to be true to my manifesto and become a decent human being.

My admiration for Harvey does not wane; a rabbit in headlights when it comes to decision making she’s often my only reference point for those big leaps of faith: a motherless single mother at 39 with no family in the UK, run to drama-loving, arty, crafty, music-loving Somerset where P. J. was raised. I start promoting local gigs, like Polly’s parents, calling them Sketchy Sessions. This led to writing and running an evening course, which, in turn, ended up with an Exemplary from Ofsted and a recommendation to do the P.G.C.E. Who knew? When Harvey won the Mercury Prize, after a hiatus, in 2011 I returned to London and music journalism; armour on, taking up the role of live reviews editor for www.thegirlsare.com and moving into digital music journalism.