Titanic Days : Promotion : Q Online Interview

Morrissey once described Kirsty MacColl "as a voice gradually added to a body", before adding - in very uncharacteristic style - "she has great songs and a crackin' bust." Crackin' bust comments aside, the voice and the songs are among Britain's most memorable for the past twenty years, spanning protest folk (A New England), sparkly 60s pop (Days) and superior Christmas chart fodder (Fairytale of New York).

Yet MacColl has just released her first new material for seven years - the Latin flavoured Tropical Brainstorm - ending a lengthy break from the music industry which at one point found her at the brink of throwing the whole thing in altogether. "I was fed up with the music business at one point, around 1994, because it so not about music," she explains.

Speaking to Q Online in the boardroom of her record company, MacColl quickly emerges as a wary, tough and almost defensive character, though her appearance is virtually unchanged since her last flirtation with the press. Croydon's greatest songwriter has features which are best described as elfin even only they're not tiny, and answers practically every question with a prefix of 'no'.

Tropical Brainstorm is your first album since you split with Steve Lillywhite. Did you miss having him as your producer?

"Well he was my producer some of the time, but he wasn't always my producer. The last studio album I did he didn't produce [1994's Titanic Days] and he didn't produce me when I was starting out. We did two albums together and I've recorded about five, so that didn't really figure in it. . ."

In the publicity blurb for the album you say you feel much happier now than you have since releasing Titanic Days in 1994. So you've been miserable for seven years?

"Well, I've been miserable for a lot longer that! Em, no, I started feeling a lot happier around 1995. I was listening to a lot of Cuban music and Brazilian music for a couple of years before that as well as since and that's when I decided that it's about time to start writing songs again. Sometimes I've had really intense periods when I've been inspired and I've been miserable. But it's much harder to do it the other way around; it's much harder to be inspired and creative when you're not miserable because it's much harder to find anything to write about really..."

So you find more inspiration in misery?

"I didn't want to do that this time. I'd made a very melancholy album and I didn't want to do it again. People would say 'Oh it's that miserable British woman, depressed again!'"

The Latin sound on Tropical Brainstorm betrays what you've been doing for the past few years. When did you first go to Cuba?

"The first time I went was in '92, and then I went in '94 as a representative for the Cuban Solidarity Campaign to a big meeting that was going on in Havana with Castro speaking at it and representatives from all over the world. Then I got hooked really and I just kept going back."

How did you get involved in the Cuban Solidarity Movement?

"Someone had asked me about my trip there and the Cuban Solidarity Campaign must have read about it and they asked me if I'd do some stuff for them, and I was only too keen. And there's something... don't know... I wanted to lend my support to this tiny little country that's battling against this super giant over the road, which is the USA. I think they've maintained themselves remarkably well, considering the kind of extraordinary hardship they've had to deal with."

You say you began writing the album while travelling around Latin America...

"I was on the plane, an hour and a half before we landed, flying over the coast of Brazil, this strip of land and jungle, just fantastic, just how you imagine it - just like the cover of the album. And I don't know how it happened, but this song [Celestine] just popped into my head, lyrics, everything. And I thought, 'well, hour and a half before we land, might as well write it down'. So I wrote down the lyrics and the melody in my own personal notational style, and I thought, 'this is really good'. Then a week later I managed to borrow a guitar to work out the chords and then a week after that I managed to go into a studio to record it. And that was funny, trying to boss people around in a language I was crap at, especially when they all want to be in Dire Straits and you want them to sound...Brazilian (laughs). They'd turn up with rock guitars and syn-drums and I'd be like I really want something more acoustic-y and they were like 'Oh we want to be in Dire Straits' and I'm going, 'I can get rock in London, I came here for something different...'"

Then you hooked with Dave Ruffy and Pete Gleinister, who you've worked with before...

"Pete Glenister is a guitarist primarily who also does production and programming and he played guitar on my version of New England, so we've been working together a long time and I've written a lot of songs with him over the years. And Dave Ruffy is a drummer who used to be in The Ruts, way back, worked on Titanic Days. I go way back with him as well."

Did you know Ruffy from his punk days?

"No, I met him in the late eighties/early nineties. But because I wanted to make a pop record primarily with Latin influences - I didn't want to make a purist Latin record so I could say 'Look at me I can do Latin' - I wanted to work with people that would understand where I'm coming from, and that would have a really good pop sensibility. I had a very clear idea in my head how I wanted this to sound overall. And I knew I could communicate that idea with those two guys - it's just easier to communicate with people you know well."

Did they both have experience with Latin music?

"They didn't have any background in Latin music at all. They didn't listen to it; they weren't knowledgeable about it. But when we started out we didn't have a record deal, but we had a lot of songs. They were into doing it and we just said 'right, we've got a studio, we've got songs and we're into doing it'. In the few days we'd been in the studio the year before we'd come out with things that we thought were so strong - I mean we'd done most of 'Shoes' at that point. We thought, 'you know, this stuff's really good, it's really strong, it's better if we've got stuff to play people really.' So they believed in it and I believed in it and they said 'let's work on it' so we went into the studio every day for five months before we got a deal."

How did In These Shoes come about?

"It's very kind of dancy I think. It was sort of inspired by the idea of some party I went to last year, and for some reason decided to wear very high heels because I've got a whole wardrobe of them like Imelda Marcos or something, and I haven't worn any of them twelve years. Then I spent the whole evening wondering if I was going to be crippled for life, if I'd ever walk again!"

Do you feel you're ready to handle the music industry this time?

"Yeah, actually, I'm coping very well at the moment. I've got much better support around me now, I've got really good management, the record company are very supportive, my boyfriend's very supportive, my kids are supportive - and I'm older, I feel more confident as a person, it's not quite as traumatic as it used to be... I'm much happier now than I used to be."

Promotion of other albums - Kite - Electric Landlady - Titanic Days

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Titanic Days : Promotion : Q Online Interview

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