Cyndi Lauper - and Lou Reed - Brief Article - Interview

Interview, August, 2001 by Lou Reed

WHERE'S SHE BEEN? MAKING MUSIC ON HER OWN TERMS

LOU REED: So, Cyndi, I've been listening to your new CD, Shine [Edel America Records], which comes out later this month. It's great!

CYNDI LAUPER: Oh, thanks, Lou. I wrote the songs with some friends, like William Wittman [Lauper's recording partner on Shine], Ryuichi Sakamoto and Jan Pulsford, and I recorded it with Bill in this little cottage right over the garage.

LR: Where's this?

CL: In Connecticut. You know, I've always wanted to be able to work at home, so I decided to put together a studio at home so I could record there--the guerrilla warfare music approach.

LR: How did you master all the equipment?

CL: I'm not doing it all by myself--I'm a backseat driver, Lou. My whole life I've been sitting behind somebody going, "Hey! What'd you just do?"

LR: [laughs] Engineers like that.

CL: Poor Bill. He's the greatest. Finally, for this album, he had the time and I had the space. So I put the studio together so I could record in a place where I could just focus on the work.

LR: Dealing with sound on the road can be difficult.

CL: [laughs] I had this dream once where I took my soundman over to the monitor and said, "Can you hear that? Do you know what that feels like?" and he said, "No." And then I started choking him, and I said, "It feels like that!" When I woke up I was like, "Holy cow, I guess I'm angry." He was such a sweet man but he never got it right.

LR: The only thing better than dreaming it would have been actually doing it. Soundmen deserve to be tortured. What instruments do you play?

CL: I'm learning to play the dulcimer. I play it like a guitar, you know what I mean? I do have the eagle-claw hand. I used to play the trombone. [laughs] I thought it would help me sing louder.

LR: You thought it'd build up your breath?

CL: Yeah. I have big breaths now.

LR: You've got such huge range. Did you work on that or were you born with it?

CL: I thought I was terrific right away. When I was four or five, I was like, "I got it!" I was singing to every Rodgers and Hammerstein record my mother had. I would do all the parts.

LR: Did that help you in school?

CL: Well, I flunked out of school several times. After my mother got divorced, she put us in this Catholic school--that's where I learned how to curse. And then I got thrown out after six months, and I thought, There you go--there is a God. Back then everybody was always telling me my dream of becoming a singer was impossible.

LR: They told me to learn typing as a backup. [laughs[ I'm a good 40 words a minute.

CL: I got fired [from a secretarial job] after they brought in the electric typewriter. I was like a gal-Friday-the-13th. I just couldn't concentrate.

LR: How would you describe the songs on your new album?

CL: I think they're about my interior life.

LR: The song "Comfort You" is very beautiful. Is that meant for anybody in particular?

CL: It's about living in the city. There are people who wash up along the streets--you see them all the time--and I'd like to go out and save them, but I know I can't. "Water's Edge" is an old song that deals with that childish part of me that always thinks people are going to be together forever--then you're devastated when it doesn't pan out that way.

LR: You're pretty psychologically astute, and that shows up in these songs.

CL: That's from a lot of therapy. [both laugh]

LR: Did you write the album all at once or in pieces?

CL: In pieces. I wrote the first song right after I got off tour with Cher [in 1999]. I went down to Nashville and wrote with Jan Pulsford, and I cried the whole time because I really missed my son who was just around a year old then. Even though I was trying to sit down and write a commercial song, the only thing that would come out was "I miss my baby." So I just went with it, and then I felt better and I was able to move on.

LR: That's a great thing about writing, isn't it?

CL: Yeah, the whole process is amazing. There's a balance: you've got one foot in the interior world and one foot out here with everyone else, and the only bridge is music, the words and the silence that comes before them. That may sound a little obscure, but for me, first a silence comes and then suddenly I have this vision and start writing.

LR: I can feel that energy on this album. The lead song "Shine" just jumps at you. Kids in clubs will go crazy to that.

CL: Oh, I hope they do. I just did a club mix for it last night. But you know, Lou, I really like this album because it has balls. It isn't passive. I'm Italian, so I guess that comes naturally.

LR: How can you be Italian with a name like Lauper?

CL: Lauper's my father's name. He's German and Swiss and my mom's Italian. So I'm German, Swiss and Sicilian. Kinda like cold cuts. [laughs] The German and the Italian in me are always fighting and the Swiss guy in the middle is goin', "OK, let's talk here. Everybody calm down." [both laugh]

Lou Reed's POEtry, a collaboration with Robert Wilson, will be presented at BAM's Next Wave Festival in November.