The Phairest of them all - singer Liz Phair - Interview

Interview, Sept, 1994 by Beck

When Liz Phair opens her mouth, ears prick up. Heads turn. Hearts beat faster. All for good reason: Phair struck the music world like a match, lighting the way for future derring-doers and heating up many a headphone with last year's Exile in Guyville (Matador), her sharp double-length CD debut, which played like an inner travelogue, oozing sexuality and cutting to the complex emotional core. With Whip-Smart, her new follow-up, Phair continues to sling arrows through tired perceptions of just what's expected of a twenty-seven-year-old woman singer. We hooked up Phair with fellow musical fire-starter Beck, twenty-four, an artist who's reviled by critics who just don't get it, who continues to baffle music-industry marketing teams, and yet who is absolutely adored by fans starved for something spontaneous, something creative. Here's what they had to say.

LIZ PHAIR: Hey. How ya doin'?

BECK: Hello.

LP: What's going on--have you ever done one of these?

B: No, I've never done this.

LP: Me neither. I figured I could bullshit with you.

B: Yeah, we can foist about.

LP: Where are you?

B: I'm actually in a very idyllic place right now. I'm on the front lawn of [K Records founder] Calvin Johnson's house in Olympia, Washington, under a shady tree, and there are blue skies, and the flowers are all coming out of the ground, and punk rockers are all here throwing yoyo's and making Polaroids, and there's a punk-rock band in the basement banging away.

LP: That's kind of beautiful. I'm taking Polaroids, too. I've got cover art due. I'm really into anything that you can take around by yourself. Like, anticrew.

B: Yeah, anti-entourage. I got this little four-track [recorder] that's battery-powered and you can just practically flip it into your jacket. So, where are you now?

LP: I'm way up here in the north woods of Wisconsin, just hanging out, on vacation.

B: You're in an idyllic place, too.

LP: Yeah. I'm looking at a huge lake with water lilies all over it. We canoed yesterday.

B: Wow. We just finished a tour. I saw you in Chicago.

LP: That was pretty fun. How does it feel when people mosh to your harmonica solos? I think that's one of the greatest things I've ever seen.

B: At first it was hilarious. Actually, they've been mellowing out a little lately, 'cause at first they didn't even know that I played acoustic guitar or harmonica and they didn't know what to do.

LP: So tell me what you're doing next. What are the huge plans?

B: The huge plans?

LP: The unrealistic ones.

B: Oh, the unrealistic ones. I've never been an ambitious person and I never really look forward all that much and just sort of roll along from day to day.

LP: Are you political?

B: No, I'm not really educated. I didn't go to high school or college. I'm sort of ignorant and I made a conscious decision to concern myself with just music and make it simple, but I think there's no way you can't be.

LP: Well, don't you ever postulate about the future? What do you think's gonna happen?

B: Well, there's a feeling of helplessness.

LP: Why do you feel helpless? I don't feel helpless at all.

B: I don't know. I do sometimes. I mean, maybe less now, but when you're eighteen and you're just trying to make it in the world, trying to eat and survive--

LP: But look at you.

B:--and then you think of these massive problems and you just feel like, Wow, what could I ever . . . I mean, it's beyond me.

LP: But if anything, you're like a living example of a solution for eighteen-year-olds.

B: [laughs] Yeah, well, not everybody would agree.

LP: Well, you may not want to keep what you've got, but you've figured out how to get it, which is the fantasy of a lot of eighteen-year-olds. I love your song-writing. I love your lyrics, too.

B: Oh, thanks. I like your songs--your songs are great.

LP: I was addicted to your CD for a while. Once I could hear the words, once I was intuitively seeing them, I loved to sing to it.

B: Oh, cool!

LP: The words totally come out of my mouth and make me really happy, like I wish I'd said them.

B: Great, that's the way it should be.

LP: Exactly.

B: It should just become your own song. That's what I like about folk music. It's just everybody's songs and everybody can take a song and reinterpret it their own way and change the words.

LP: And everybody has a part in it. I think that's when you get to the real meat of music--when it's universal without being trivialized, without being compromised.

B: Exactly. Music's become unhealthy. It used to be a communal thing. Now you go and watch a couple of people do it. I think that's why all these kids start moshing, 'cause that's the only thing that they can give back.

LP: Kind of an expression of the energy you give them?

B: Yeah.

LP: So, ask me a question.

B: Oh, O.K. Uh . . . I've never interviewed anybody.

LP: Don't you ever interview your interviewers?

B: No, never. I always say really dumb things in interviews. At first I couldn't believe that people would even take me seriously enough to interview me, so I used to say really dumb, random things.

LP: You're totally lovable--for people who have creative tastes, I mean. I wish I could lie more spontaneously.