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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.'



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