But there is no mistaking Concrete Blonde’s lead singer Johnette Napolitano’s signature voice; you know when you are listening to one of their tracks. And you sure know when she is making a point on the phone, as she litters laughter around the conversation as if it was punctuation. “I will never in my life be the person that sits down and says, ‘I gotta write a song today’. No, no, no,” she says laughing. “That is not the way it works; without inspiration it just becomes a job. That is just like having sex when you don’t feel like it. I didn’t have the words to Joey until literally the cab ride on the way to the studio, and it was the last song we recorded. I knew what I wanted to say but I knew it was going to be difficult to sing. I only do things if they really hit the truth bone, and that can be not so comfortable. So I will wait to the last minute, I only want to record it once or twice and that should be it. It is like zen preparation for one good take, just like the Japanese painters do – you prepare your ink, you prepare all day for one good take.”
After visiting Australia last year for the 20th anniversary of their album Bloodletting (“We didn’t play it from start to finish. I think that was a trend for a couple of ‘80s bands or whatever but it’s not a good idea. For us, we didn’t have a hit until our third album, so us going out and playing a whole record would be fucking off”), Johnette is coming back solo to play The Famous Spiegeltent. “The show is called Self Portrait 2012,” she explains. “Everyone keeps talking about how 2012 is the year the world ends and all that crap which is funny – it’s supposed to be this big scary year and I don’t feel that at all, so it will be me taking stock. It’s not a retro show by any means, it is a self portrait, this is what I have been, here is part of the book, here is a story behind some of the lyrics that people have always wanted to know over the years and I have never really talked about.” I can see that this is all very arty and the like but it doesn’t sound all that entertaining and thankfully Johnette feels the same. “I am going to do all the things that people know and like and want to hear the most,” she says once gain laughing at her self. “If you are a fan I think that you are going to get more than you have ever had. I am never out to disappoint people because I am too cheap myself, I never go to shows because it’s expensive and I know they are never going to be as good as I want. I never want to stop touring and I never want to stop having a good time when I’m on the road.”
Johnette’s passion is still the art of the song, a passion she believes in so strongly she has never questioned her own band’s name. “Michael Stipe thought of Concrete Blonde and I never asked him what it means,” she says quite simply. “The way he puts things together, he’s not literal, everyone knows that about R.E.M. and Michael’s stuff, he is a very visual writer, abstract. So the minute I heard the name I thought, ‘I like it’ and the relationship between the two words, the softness and hardness about it applies to us very well. It applies to my music very well and it applies to me very well. So I never asked because that is what art is all about anyway. One person will hear a song and say it’s about one thing, somebody will hear evil, somebody will hear love, somebody will hear a good song, somebody will hear a bad song, a good singer, a bad singer. That’s what art is. Is this a good painting or a bad painting? You can’t tell people how to perceive art. If it makes you feel something, if it touches a memory, that is yours. That is what it’s all about. Art would exist without the beholder. A performer wouldn’t exist if there was no audience. One doesn’t exist without the other.”
BY JACK FRANKLIN
