East Meets West more than halfway

c1990 Ron Fell

This interview was originally published in the London Warsaw New York tourbook. It is reproduced here with permission.

BT: When I was growing up there were a few radio stations that played whole albums. So I taped them from the radio. Now in Poland, the radio plays the same thing you hear in England, and the videos are the same. I just came back from Poland-- they are very up-to-date, maybe because MTV now spreads that far.

BT: No, you couldn't buy the records, so people had to resort to the radio. There were secondhand shops that sold very expensive Western records. But I was obsessed. I managed to get money from my parents. They knew I was a big fan and they allowed me to buy records. I had a lot of soul-- Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind and Fire, Motown, the Supremes. But I also had rock and roll-- Pink Floyd, King Crimson-- at that time I didn't really know what I liked, I just liked music. Then I realized that some things appealed to me more than others. Carole King's Tapestry was one of the first records I bought. I sang almost everything on that album, though at that time I didn't understand what she was singing about. That was my first contact with the English language-- trying to sing lyrics.

BT: Of course I am extremely excited after my latest trip to Poland. I really don't know much more than you do, because everything I observed was from the English media, but I can tell you how people react to it. For the first time they really smile and joke about high prices. They know this is just a period of transition-- that it is going to settle down. People are actually optimistic, and there is an incredibly hopeful feel everywhere. Things have improved in general, but the prices are still very, very high.

BT: Time and Tide almost got released, but something broke down somewhere between CBS and the Polish recording company. They released Michael Jackson's Bad but they couldn't agree on mine. The new one is definitely going to come out but I would like the first one to come out too. We will see what will happen.

BT: I always sang. My earliest memory is of singing at home parties. My parents would make me, and I had to sing with my back to everybody because I was so embarrassed. I sang at school assemblies, but I never thought that was going to be my profession. When I was fifteen, somebody got me to take part in a talent competition. The people who were judging the competition later offered me professional work. I was eighteen. It was an all-female band in Poland called Alibabki. I had been a fan of this band for years-- I had photographs of them in my scrapbook, but I still thought about going back to school because I always wanted to study mathematics and work with computers. Now anybody can work with computers, but at that time it seemed like something difficult and enigmatic. There is something about people who are into mathematics-- they are also very much into music.

BT: Exactly. I went to the university and started to study physics, but after half a year this manager found me and he told me that I could always come back to school, and he convinced me to go on this tour of Russia for three months. I liked the idea of going to Russia and I thought "Of course I can go back if I want." Well, I left the university and I never did go back.

BT: I first came to Chicago and lived there for almost a year. After Alibabki I organized another band and we performed once in Poland. An agent saw us and asked us to come to Chicago to play in a Polish community club for six months. It sounded like an adventure; we decided we had to do it.

BT: This club was visited by the Polish community of four generations-- old people who left before the war, and teenagers. So we had to provide music for everybody-- old and contemporary Polish songs and American top forty.

BT: That's right. It was all part of my training. Not only language, but musically. I had to sing something by Pat Benatar, then a Polish song. When that contract ran out we went back to Poland, but I had made some friends in America, and also I had a boyfriend who was English. I later came back to Chicago and rented a flat on the North Side.

BT: When I came to England I decided that I wasn't going to work in music anymore because everything I had done was cover versions, working for other people, and it wasn't satisfying. I was quite fed up-- I wanted to do something this time that made sense. My boyfriend worked in a children's home, and I thought this was such meaningful work., I applied for ten different jobs and nobody wanted me, mainly because I had no experience and my English was still not very good. So I found Melody Maker, which is the source of all the music advertisements. I was looking for session work and I met some people who needed a session singer, One of those people was Danny. When I told him that I was Polish and I didn't have any photographs or demo tapes, he wasn't interested. He said, "We can't waste time on auditions. So I went to do a demo tape and the engineer on the session turned out to be a bass player from Danny's band! It was fate.

BT: One was "I Try" by Angela Bofill and the second was "Clouds" by Chaka Khan. I wanted to show off a bit, I wanted to record something that could impress people. The engineer didn't tell me he was Danny's bass player, but when I finished he asked whether I'd like to join their band. His name is Warne Livesey and he's the producer of Paul Young and Midnight Oil. Danny and Warne and two other boys worked in a band called Bronze. We worked together for a year and then split up because we didn't get a record deal.

BT: Yes. Danny met two guys who used to be in a band, Blue Rondo a la Turk, and they put the writing team together. They needed somebody to do backing vocals so he asked me. I became a member but I wasn't signed to the record company. I worked with them on their first album Whose Side Are You On and then I decided that was it.

BT: I wasn't writing or producing. I wasn't asked, and I didn't want to impose myself on them because they really didn't need another person to help them--they were doing very well.

BT:Oh yes. We started together and built up a career which was quite okay in Europe. We sold one and a half million albums. I had a wall full of gold and platinum discs and it was nice. The record company did everything to keep us together, but I couldn't go on doing the same thing again.

BT: It became obvious that Danny would leave with me. WEA didn't want to lose Danny so they wanted to keep me with the company. But because, for them, I was just a backing vocalist, I thought it was wrong to stay with a company that would treat me like that forever. So when CBS was also interested in signing us I didn't think long about it.

BT: We showed them two demos. First, when Danny went to see Muff Winwood (CBS A&R executive) it was the first side of the Time and Tide album. The second time he wanted to meet me too, and we played the rest. When Muff heard it they said, we just have to see your lawyer, and that was it. It was very quick-- he decided our demos were good enough straight away.

BT: He said that people bring in twenty-four tracks that sound worse than this eight-track that we've got.

BT: Yes, it was recorded well over a year before it was released in America (1987). It's a very old record by now and that's why I was so anxious to go into the studio and do this one (London Warsaw New York).

BT: It is so good that [Time and Tide] went platinum in the States. We were in the studio recording the second album when we found out. Our mixing engineer, Phil Harding, also mixed Time and Tide, so we celebrated with champagne straight away.

BT: We recorded Time and Tide over three years ago, and since that time technology has improved. We had that in mind. We wanted the album to sound better. But I must say we didn't try to make this record more Pop-- it came out like that because we are influenced by everything we hear.

BT: I was compared to so many people that it didn't bother me. I was compared to the most unusual voices that I never thought I sounded like but the comparisons were always flattering.

BT: We did this album in less time because we were writing the first one for a long time! We were still in Matt Bianco when we started to write the Time and Tide album. In many ways I'm happier with this new album. This is the second production job in my life, and I felt a little more confident; I knew what I was doing. We were experimenting more courageously. And it involved more live musicians-- we had live bass players and drummers. In the future it's going to be even more like that. Also I'm happier with my own vocals because for the first time I recorded my vocals on my own, without a sound engineer. I was recording in the control room, in front of the console, and I was engineering myself. That allowed me to feel free.

BT: Yes, and on the first one too. It's easier for me to do that, rather than teach backing vocalists. It's fun, backing vocals are always something I do the quickest.

BT: We had two songs that Danny originally felt quite strongly about but I didn't like them so we came up with "Ordinary People" and added it at the last minute. The other two are going to be B-sides.

BT: We listen to a lot of stuff. "Copernicus" was a combination of a lot of things. There is this record by Aretha Franklin called "School Days" and I always wanted to do something like that. We wanted to get something with this very fast swing feel, because Danny and I both feel for samba, we both enjoy Latin music.

BT: Yes.

BT: I wanted to sum up all my life, living in England away from home. I meant it to one person, somebody who wanted me for all of the things I experienced.

BT: "Baby You're Mine" and "Cruising For Bruising" were written at the same time. It was one of the earliest we wrote. Danny came up with the whole structure and chord progression and just gave me the tape. I put it on my eight-track and came up with a melody and words.

Danny White: I came over not long after that and it was all finished.

BT: It's one tone lower, much slower, much more relaxed.

DW: We've had more time to give more thought into the arrangement. I prefer it slower, so when we come through next time it will have benefitted.

BT: Well, I never would have dared to record that if it wasn't for people's encouragement. When we did this in America, people would urge me to record it. First, we recorded the version exactly like Aretha Franklin did.

DW: The way we did it live was based on the way Aretha did it.

BT: It was not inspiring to Danny, not inspiring to me. So we went far out.

DW: It's really important to treat a song with respect if you cover it. We've experienced that when people cover our songs.

BT: I can't wait to do it live! I really enjoy singing this.

BT: Yes. Chopin, Curie and Copernicus were Polish.

BT: That was the point.

BT: In "Reward" I only sing one line, and it is exactly what I sing in English, translated to Polish. In "Copernicus" there is a whole chorus sung in Polish and that is an exact translation also.

BT: Since we started to write the new album our lives revolved between those three towns in those three countries. Although Danny didn't go to Warsaw as often as me. In Poland I have so many supporters that I always try to do something for them so they know that I haven't forgotten that I am Polish and I love them. Apart from the fact that those three cities are very important in my career and my life, it was half a joke too...

BT: We could have put Paris. When you buy, for example, perfume it's often written: London, Paris, New York. I could have left Paris there because France is the first country that discovered the Time and Tide album, and it's equally important to us-- but I wanted to keep it to three towns, and Warsaw had to be there.

DW: Eastern Europe cities are always forgotten.

BT: No one seems to consider Eastern European bloc countries glamorous.

DW: What the lyric is trying to say in "Copernicus" is that people are basically the same everywhere.

BT: Exactly.