Jewel control
Saturday Telegraph Magazine. February 27th 1999
She did as many as 500 gigs in a year, hit 40 cities in
30 days, and it worked: 10 million copies of her debut
album sold and a $2 million contract for her poetry. Now
Britain is about to feel the force of Jewel. By Neil
McCormick.
Despite her name (and it is her given name), Jewel
doesn't look like she spends a lot of time in jewellery
shops. Her taste in clothing leans more towards hip,
understated casualwear than haute couture, and she
sports no visible body piercings - not even on her ears.
But there she was, in New York for a couple of days on
business, killing time between appointments by indulging
in a little window-shopping on Madison Avenue, when
something caught her eye: an elaborate, turquoise,
gem-studded guitar strap. So she pressed a buzzer to
gain entry to Billy Martin's, an upmarket jewellery and
design store and... well, I'll let her tell the rest.
'This guy comes over, so I say, "Is that a guitar
strap?" He goes, "No, actually it's a conch belt" and
gives me this dirty look like I'm a country and western
ignoramus. I go, "Oh, I thought it was a guitar strap",
and he goes, "Actually, we don't make guitar straps. We
only make them for Gene Simmons and Dwight Yoakam." I
say, "So I can't get one?" He says, "Well" - and he
looks me up and down - "it would cost you a lot, but we
could make you one." I say, "It's so nice that you cater
to the common people." and walk out.'
Relating this story the next day, Jewel laughs
throughout, mocking both the shop assistant's
supercilious tones and her own humble-pie response. 'I
wanted to go, "**** you, idiot, do you know who you're
talking to?", but it's so cheesy.' She chuckles again.
'I just hope he sees my picture somewhere.'
Personally, I could not help wondering how on earth he
had missed it. Since the release of her 10
million-selling debut album, Pieces Of You, in 1995,
Jewel has appeared on the cover of Time, Interview and
Rolling Stone (just three among a plethora of magazine
covers); been a regular fixture of MTV; has been a guest
on all the major US chat shows; and toured with Bob
Dylan, the all-women Lilith Fair and as a major
headlining act. Her first volume of poetry, A Night
Without Armor, spent three months on the New York Times'
bestseller list (not a place one is used to finding
poetry books). And later this year, she has a starring
role in acclaimed director Ang Lee's Civil War drama,
Ride With The Devil. This cinematic debut is a brave
move; Jewel will be playing opposite some of the
brightest young actors of the day - Skeet Ulrich,
Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. Even Lee admits he was taking a
chance: ' Hiring Jewel was a risk-taking experience, but
very rewarding.'
Although relatively unknown in the UK (where she has
sold only some 100,000 albums), Jewel is a genuine pop
phenomenon in the US. In fact, had the shop assistant
strolled just a couple of blocks west of Madison, he
would have been treated to the sight of an enormous
painting of her face hanging rather conspicuously in
front of the Virgin Records store in Times Square.
A very nice face it is, too. Still only 24, Jewel has
the fresh beauty of a blonde ingenue, her cool green
eyes and full lips perfectly set in the oval of her
face, to which the supposed imperfections of her bent
nose and crooked teeth somehow only serve to add allure.
Her appearance on the Times Square billboard, however,
does not quite prepare you for her actual dimensions:
there's not too many people she could tower over in real
life. Yet while her height (or lack of it) contributes
to an image of girlish youthfulness, there is something
old beyond her years about Jewel, a sense of complete
focus and inner gravity. I've met her before -
rehearsing for an appearance on Later with Jools Holland
and backstage after a show at the Shepherd's Bush Empire
- and noticed what a calm centre she makes to whatever
storm is being kicked up around her.
In New York on promotional duties for her new album,
Spirit, she has been on the go since 7am (for a
dateline-crossing phone interview with a foreign radio
station) and won't finish till around midnight (with a
global live webcast from the high-tech Internet studios
at Atlantic Records). Despite this exhausting schedule,
she seems surprisingly good-humoured when she settles
down to talk to me. As I turn on the microphone, she
helpfully suggests that she might kick off proceedings,
before drily launching into a mock précis of her life
story: 'Raised by wolves in Alaska. Learned to yodel at
the moon. Lived in a van on the San Diego freeway, only
stopping for gas...'
One gets the impression Jewel may have been asked to
discuss her personal history a few too many times.
Still, it is an intriguing story, even reduced to its
bare bones. She was, in fact, raised in a log cabin on a
ranch in Homer, Alaska (pop. 4,000). There was no
electricity, telephone or running water. Her father, Atz
Kilcher, and mother, Nedra Carrol, performed as a folk
duo and variety act in local hotels and bars until they
divorced when Jewel was eight. She stayed with Atz, a
Vietnam vet who was turning into a 'mean' drinker. Jewel
was drafted in to take her mother's place on stage, and
spent years touring the bars and clubs of Alaska, until,
at 15, she went to live with her mother in Anchorage.
After a brief spell in art school in Michigan, she
headed for San Diego. Desperately unhappy, suffering
chronic illness due to weak kidneys, working in dead-end
waitressing jobs and wondering what she was going to do
with her life, Jewel received some rather unusual advice
from her mother: why not cut down on living expenses and
'make herself available to her dream' by moving into her
car. Jewel duly lived in a VW camper van for a year,
washing in public conveniences. Concentrating on
songwriting and performing, she had landed herself a
record deal by the time she was 18. And the rest was...
well, a lot of hard work. actually.
Despite the more romantic notions of success in the
music business, you don't sell 10 million albums by
talent alone. Pieces Of You is a simple, low-key, almost
entirely acoustic affair that failed to make any
discernible impression on its release. Jewel, however,
was turning herself into a low-maintenance one-woman
road warrior, performing a staggering 500 shows a year.
Her target was to do 40 cities every 30 days, driving
herself in a rented car, doing high-school shows in the
morning, radio stations and in-store appearances during
the day, opening for a band in the evening and finishing
with a coffee-house show of her own at night. And she is
quite extraordinary live, with a vocal repertoire that
extends from yodelling to operatics, and an intimate
chatty style that pulls audiences into her songs. Some
14 months after its release, Pieces Of You finally
charted.
Which did not mean Jewel's work was done. If anything,
with Atlantic Records putting its full weight behind
what was now a high-priority hit act, Jewel's relentless
gigging and promotional activity only increased.
Although working in the unusually somewhat marginal area
of introverted, acoustic singer-songwriter (her debut
album certainly has none of the melodramatic angst and
high-gloss production that characterises the work of
Alanis Morissette and the many angry young women who
followed in her wake), Jewel has nonetheless been
marketed like a mainstream pop act. Beautiful and
curvaceous - her cleavage is, frankly, hard to avoid -
she's become a kind of Folky Spice, a pin-up for
sensitive adolescent boys and a role model for dreamy
teenage girls. Her debut album has probably served to
introduce more young people to the potential for poetic
self-expression in simple acoustic-based singing and
songwriting than anything since the advent of Bob Dylan.
And this despite the fact that even Jewel herself
doesn't think it is particularly good.
'I cried the first time I heard Pieces Of You,' she
confesses. ' I can't listen to it. I've never listened
to it again. I was really uncomfortable and
self-conscious. I just can't listen to my singing on
that record, it doesn't sound like me. I mean, it's a
good record for a teenager - it's honest, it's awkward,
it's all there - but having it taken so seriously was
like having a student's artwork taken seriously. Student
art isn't meant to be critiqued. You're supposed to go,
"Has potential if she keeps going".'
All of this (and a lot more besides) comes out in what
might be described as a gushing torrent of words, were
it not for her quiet tone (she speaks so softly it's a
strain to actually hear what she's saying) and abiding
air of calm consideration. Jewel talks fast but never
seems agitated, nor does she appear to be saying
anything she hasn't thought carefully through. She is
(as perhaps might be expected from someone who has so
wholeheartedly embraced the promotional side of her
career), a very professional interviewee. In fact, there
is almost something of the politician in her, a sense of
wariness reinforced by occasional requests for
clarification. She tends to listen very carefully,
unwilling to respond until she is certain where a
question is leading. But when she answers it all pours
forth, as if she's determined to communicate the maximum
amount in the relatively small space of time each
interview is allotted. There is a sense of release about
Jewel in full flow. She is on a mission to express
herself.
'Singing in bars, and seeing what goes on in seedy dives
from a very young age could have ruined me, but instead
it made me get fascinated by people and want to record
people's emotional history, see what motivates us, see
what motivates me,' she says. 'In Anchorage we lived
across from a cemetery downtown, where there was a lot
of alcoholics. It was a very bad part of the town,
people would pass out drunk and freeze to death on the
sidewalks in front of our house. There's a service you
can call to have them pick up the stiffs. I saw friends
on welfare starting to shoplift instead of using their
food stamps. I had a friend who ended up dead from gang
violence. I had a friend, Edward, who was always kind of
a fat kid, and he was 18 when he killed himself, shot
himself in the face at our house, and left a note saying
nobody would love him because he was fat. Just seeing
those levels of humanity touches and bites your heart in
a way that you'll never be free from. It made me
incredibly determined.'
Lives can seem impossibly well ordered in retrospect,
and Jewel's certainly seems to have equipped her with
everything for modern superstardom. Her work ethic was
cultivated on the farm ('It was a hard discipline,
physical labour, lots of chores and not too many
luxuries') and perhaps stoked by dyslexia ( 'I think
because I'm dyslexic, I always tended to overcompensate.
I have to try things so much harder, I end up trying 20
times harder than I really need to'). Her creativity was
nurtured by artistically inclined parents ('From when we
were little, my mother used to sit us down every Monday
and do a poetry workshop') and emphasised by her
isolation ('There was no TV. Instead I would sit down
and write something'), while her musical craft was honed
performing with her father from early childhood ('I used
to practise constantly, mercilessly, learning different
harmonies, learning to imitate a lot of different
voices').
Her emotional drive was certainly fuelled by the divorce
('Leaving your Mom on a street corner while you drive
away in your father's car is just brutal') and a
difficult relationship with her father ('There were a
lot of hard times, a lot of years where he disappointed
both of us'). When you look at it that way, it seems a
wonder it took her quite so long to make it. If indeed
she really has made it.
'It just feels like a popularity contest I've won,' she
insists. 'I think I'd be foolhardy to believe in it too
much. I'm still wet behind the ears, I'm just learning.
I want to get better. It would be preposterous to say at
my age I'm very good at my craft. I feel like I'm just
getting my tricks down.'
Like many in her profession, Jewel is a paradoxical
personality, equal parts confidence and insecurity.
She's bold enough to allow her poetry to be published in
a handsomely bound book, but will rattle off, entirely
unbidden, a lengthy list of what she considers her many
flaws as a writer (which include, apparently, bad
grammar, terrible spelling and no sense of structure).
Even the kindest of critics would be compelled to admit
that while Jewel may be the best-paid poet in history
(she signed a $2 million book deal with HarperCollins),
she's unlikely to figure among the greatest. Her
self-absorbed opus reads like an adolescent girl's diary
in blank verse.
Fortunately, she's a better songwriter, capable of
spinning delicate melodies around deceptively complex
lyrics. With subtle band arrangements underpinning her
crystalline voice, Spirit represents a significant
development of the raw talent showcased on her
bestselling debut.
And so it should. During her relentless, epic
promotional campaign for an album that by her own
admission she can't even bring herself to listen to, she
assembled a repertoire of more than 200 original songs,
which she then had to whittle down to just 13. 'I had a
pretty strong theme in mind,' she says, 'so I just
picked songs that fit.' These feature an abundance of
uplifting, homespun philosophies such as 'what's simple
is true' and 'only kindness matters', although she
deftly counterbalances the Fortune Cookie positivity
with an eloquent sense of life's many hardships, as if
she's trying to find a way out of darkness by the light
of idealism. In a sense, Spirit concerns itself with the
triumph of hope over experience, of optimism over
cynicism. This, after all, is Jewel's story.
'In the States what a lot of people call optimism is
actually denial,' Jewel says. 'It's a blind conservative
optimism: "everything's fine, there's no problem, look
on the bright side". It's rubbish. There are obvious
problems in the world and your experiences can make you
bitter or they can make you determined to overcome.
That's a choice we make, I guess, every day. Cynicism is
fun, its kind of a nice brain game because it's smart,
but ultimately it doesn't help much. I look at someone
like Martin Luther King who knew what tremendous
opposition he faced and stayed mercilessly focused on
what change was possible, because he knew that lending
the problem his despair was to become part of the
problem. It's something I've thought about a lot. If I
feel poorly, or when my circumstances are poor, I want
to know the quickest route to getting better. Which
means working out what I am going to do, how am I
contributing to the problem, how can I control at least
what I can? It means getting a lot more conscious of
your life and a lot more thoughtful. To me that's
intelligent optimism, and that's what I choose. Cynicism
isn't smarter, it's just safer.'
The cynical, of course, might point out that Jewel's
rags-to-riches success owes at least as much to her
willingness to embrace the record industry's corporate
marketing machine as to her personal perseverance
against the odds. But (as might be expected from such a
seasoned campaigner) she has an answer to that, one that
sounds like something she might have picked up back on
the homestead in Alaska.
'You can ride the horse or it can ride you,' she says.
'I'm going to ride the horse as best as I can.'
Questions? Comments?
Pieces of Jewel
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