It always fascinates me about how music music actually exists within a band. What I mean is that if you separate members and have them upon their own creative landscape or say, if members depart a band to begin their own ventures and we are all able to see what it is that the individual musicians possessed within themselves in order to make them congeal with their bandmates.
For instance, let's take
The Beatles and the wealth of music all four members created as solo artists. Who knew that as a member of
The Waterboys, keyboardist Karl Wallinger had his brainchild
World Party, in which he continues to serve as the conceptualist/singer/producer/multi-instrumentalist, housed inside of himself just waiting to be released to the world? Who knew that within
The Smashing Pumpkins in which
William Patrick Corgan is famously (or infamously depending upon whom you ask) responsible for the material, that both
guitarist James Iha and
drummer Jimmy Chamberlin possessed songwriting, composition and production skills so strong that they created even better works than Corgan's own solo material in my opinion?
You can easily insert your own examples but I do believe that you can easily understand my conceit.
At this time, I am excited to turn my attention to
Everything But The Girl, the English alternative pop duo of
Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt, which existed between 1982-2000 and was unquestionably an elegant, genre defying band that crossed boundaries and bridged the gaps between musical genres of folk, soul, jazz, pop, acoustic and electronica and dance music.
I first fell in love with EBTG upon being introduced to their music via
Writer/Producer/Director John Hughes' masterpiece
"She's Having A Baby" (1988) during which their achingly wistful ballad
"Apron Strings" was featured upon the film's soundtrack. That introduction led me to their fourth album
"Idlewild" (released February 29, 1988) which further led me to their previous albums while also making me excitedly anticipate all of the albums that would follow.
I was even so very fortunate to have seen EBTG twice in the time span of about a year, both times at the Barrymore Theater in Madison, WI. The first time, which if memory serves was originally supposed to be held either at or near a Unitarian Church but was moved to the Barrymore, featured only Thorn and Watt accompanying themselves upon two electric guitars. The second time I saw them was in support of their brilliant, transformative album
"Walking Wounded" (released May 6, 1996), which found them in the full embrace of their electronically drenched yet intimate nightclub anthems.
And it was after that very show where I very shyly met Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt by their tour bus behind the theater. As they both graciously autographed my ticket stub, I clumsily unfurled my admiration for them and my discovery of them through the John Hughes film to which Thorn nicely yet quietly said to me, "Yeah. That's a great movie," while Watt remained silent, his inscrutable stare felt like the eyes of an owl looking right through me.
There we were for a few moments, three introverts, conversing, such as it was in mumbles, leaving me with a memory I will never forget and for them, I am certain to have been just one face in a world of many faces, completely impossible to remember at all.
Since Thorn and Watt concluded Everything But The Girl, I had essentially lost track of both of them as there was no new music under the EBTG banner to catch my attention. It really took a 2018 interview with
NPR's "Fresh Air" host Terry Gross for me to discover that Tracey Thorn had not only continued to create music as a solo artist but that she had become a celebrated author as well, with two books under her most impressive belt. That discovery led me to the further revelation that Ben Watt had also been releasing music as a solo artist as well as becoming a celebrated author on his own terms.
With this new knowledge, at the start of 2019, I began to peruse the post Everything But The Girl work of Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt, not only gathering a greater understanding of how much music existed between the two of them when they were a band but also how what gifted writers they are, each composing works of literature that are unquestionably idiosyncratic, impressive, insightful, inventive while also existing as intimate works that are resoundingly inclusive to anyone who would choose to open the pages of anything they have written.
BEDSIT DISCO QUEEN: How I Grew Up And Tried To Be A Popstar
TRACEY THORN
320 pages
Published by Virago
May 6, 2014
-I would not be surprised if anyone felt that this book's subtitle was a self-conscious illustration of false modesty. I believe that I may have rolled my eyes a hair as the idea of the globally famous Tracey Thorn as one who merely "tried" to become what she undoubtedly became seemed ridiculous to say the least. Yet within the first few pages of this book, the warmth she exuded from her richly inviting prose won me over instantly and furthermore propelled me through the entirety of her distinctly immersive memoir.
Tracey Thorn's
Bedsit Disco Queen: How I Grew Up And Tried To Be A Popstar is no self-conscious ode of false modesty in any way, shape or form. In fact, the full title of the book could not have been more openly revealing if it had even attempted. For though this memoir of Thorn's life as a musical artist, she details how she has always existed a bit out of step with the tenor of the times, never quite fitting in with the trends or the crowds due to time, place and even her age as she was just a little too young for the English punk rock scene and yet when she came of age, that time had already come to pass. Yet any sense of awkwardness became fuel for her to ultimately chart her own artistic path during which she seemed to have surprised herself with her own sense of independence, tenacity and integrity with becoming a musical artist upon her own terms and without any prefabricated manufacturing.
Through Thorn's compelling narrative, she charts the reader through her very first stabs at singing and recording, her first band as a member of the all female
The Marine Girls, her introduction to Ben Watt during their first year of college and their seemingly immediate connection as artists and as romantic partners, and of course, the creation of Everything But The Girl. She fully details her experiences with reaching commercial and critical success at a young age and how she learned to navigate the music industry during the ever changing and evolving pop cultural landscape of the 1908's and 1990's, simultaneously continuing to feel out of step while also discovering her growing emergence from adolescence into womanhood, from a certain naivete to an unapologetically feminist artist and human being in control of her own destiny.
I absolutely roared through this book. The warmth and intimacy of Tracey Thorn lyrics and singing translates beautifully into her writing as she accomplishes the tremendous feat of weaving a complicated life story into a luxuriously flowing narrative but within a written voice that both sounds as if she is sharing stories solely with you over coffee as well as functioning as an elegantly composed written work that is an absolute pleasure to read. In short, Thorn is an exceedingly excellent writer making the reading of her work an absolute privilege.
Additionally, I loved how she placed lyrics from carefully selected Everything But The Girl songs, as well as some from her solo material, into the narrative, thus illuminating her stories and the songs in turn, making for a multi-layered, multi-faceted experience overall.
So sharp, assured and gifted a writer Tracey Thorn is as she hand me completely in the palms of her literary hands--so much so that the moment I completed this book. I immediately began reading her second.
NAKED AT THE ALBERT HALL: The Inside Story Of Singing
TRACEY THORN
256 pages
Published by Virago
May 3, 2016
Where Tracey Thorn's first book did house her ambivalent feelings towards her gifts as a singer and as a somewhat reluctant popstar, she has channeled those feelings completely into her excellent second book, which takes on the nature of singing itself as well as our relationship with singers, why we sing, how we sing, what connects us to the act and process of singing, the psychology of singing as well as the art...and surprisingly, sometimes the artifice.
Leaping from memoir, Thorn works from her own somewhat reluctant and undeniably conflicted feelings and experiences as a professional singer and then explores the differences between singing in the more controlled environment of the recording studio to the vastly uncontrollable environment of the stage.
She muses about the differences in how she sings compared with her own singing heroes like
Patti Smith and contains one-on-one interviews with
Green Gartside of
Scritti Politti, Romy Madley Croft of
The xx and
Alison Moyet. She further explores the nature of singing in literature and mythology and brings us up to the minute by musing over the validity and fervor surrounding singing competition television shows, plus even more meticulously researched observations regarding the very form of musicality we all engage in at some point of our lives, from either singing "Happy Birthday" to singing hymns during church services, or performing karaoke.
While this book might sound like it exists as a form of a collegiate dissertation (albeit the very best one you would be graced to ever read), in Tracey Thorn's literary hands, it is again a work of supreme warmth and intimacy fueled by a superior intelligence, charm, curiosity and biting wit, which appears in anecdotes sprinkled throughout the book. I especially enjoyed her take on the sorts of new age music played during a hypnosis session she skeptically attended as well as another incident when baffled fans approached her in a public Women's Room and asked her to
sing a few bars of her Everything But The Girl smash hit
"Missing" to prove if it was "really her." And it is through stories like t hose that supply the full narrative with its overall drive and personality so as to not allow the book to simply exist as a dry, academic dirge.
Completely engaging, informative, educational and entertaining, Tracey Thorn enraptured me with her prose and again, I just roared through it.
PATIENT: The True Story Of A Rare Illness
BEN WATT
177 pages
Published by Grove Press
April 1, 1997
Truth be told, I purchased this book back when it was first released but I never read it.
As I look back, I think I may have been afraid of it due to the subject matter. But as I feel about the nature of music always making itself available to listeners at the right time, it was through the reading of Tracey Thorn's two books that led me right back to my bookshelf to immediately pluck Ben Watt's memoir to begin reading...over 20 years since I bought it.
And yes, now was indeed the time for me to read it.
Ben Watt's
Patient: The True Story Of A Rare Illness is a swift, fully immersive and downright harrowing memoir, expertly delivering the experience Watt himself underwent as a hospital patient over several months in 1992 as he suffered, nearly perished and ultimately recovered from the rare auto-immune disease known as
Churg-Strauss syndrome, a condition that robbed Watt of most of his small intestine.
For me, the book was quite reminiscent of
Director George Miller's "Lorenzo's Oil" (1992), as Watt's book mirrored the utterly terrifying medical presentation depicted in that film as the intensity of the disease was as relentless as the search for its identity and cure--so much so, I was unsure if I would be able to stick with it as it is indeed a literary work of existential horror. To be so rapidly confronted with the fragility of life and the ease at which one can lose any sense of a hold upon simply living is frightening to me to say the least, and the clarity and directness of Watt's meticulous details of his own experience, and at the age of 29 at that, brings the reader to the front lines of his health crisis, forcing all of us to ponder our own sense of mortality as he wrestled with his own.
And then,
Patient settles down into a rhythm of pure multi-layered poetry without diluting its power--in fact, the weight of the book increases despite its slimness. Watt provides a narrative that surrounds us with the minutiae of hospital life, from the rhythms contained in the comings and goings of doctors and nurses plus the sounds of nearby patients living and dying to the music of electronic machinery.
Watt also shares the sense of disorientation that arrives with being hospitalized as he is fraught with hallucinations, memories and dream states all claiming his attention. He provides us with various love stories and family narratives as he is routinely visited and cared for by Tracey Thorn as well as his Mother and yet the pain and fear experienced by his Father, therefore establishing a bit of disconnect and ultimately, a renewal was beautifully emotional without growing maudlin.
And then, there is Watt's relationship with himself, his mortality and his changing body all the while clearly going through the
Kubler-Ross Five Stages Of Grief over the person he was and the life he had as he ponders just how to continue should he survive.
Over 20 years since the publication of this book, Ben Watt has more than continued to live and thrive as he has become a parent to now adult children with Thorn, he has also firmly established a solo career in music through his own albums as well as his work as a Producer and DJ and he has continued his literary life as an author--and what an exceedingly gifted writer he is as again, reading this book arrived for me at the right time.
For you see, a hair over three months ago, my Dad passed away. Over the course of late October through his final day in early December, I spent copious time with him directly by his side in the hospital ICU as well as his final hours in Hospice Care, wondering precisely what he was experiencing while essentially living in the hospital myself, becoming accustomed to the people, sounds, disorientation and overall rhythms. Watt's memoir was often painful to read and more than appropriately so. But it was also one that again gave me opportunity to process what I experienced with my Dad, helping me to heal and remember.
Ben Watt achieved what I would think any writer of any genre would hope to accomplish. To compose a work that speaks to the soul, allowing you to fully engage with the life on the page as you also ponder and explore your own life in turn. In doing so,
Patient is one of those rare books that speaks directly to the life experience and what it means to live, to love and be loved.
After reading all three books by Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt, I remain hungry for more and as of this time, I am eagerly awaiting copies of Thorn's latest novel
Another Planet: A Teenager In Suburbia and Ben Watt's second memoir
Romany and Tom to arrive upon my doorstep as I have just recently ordered both.
Yes, I am amazed with how much music exists within a band. But with Everything But The Girl, I have been floored as what they have created separately with their written work has engaged me to an even greater degree and it truly has been a privilege to bear witness to their superlative artistry.
SAVAGE RADIO EPISODE #164
SAVAGE RADIO EPISODE #165
