The Life & Songs Of Kirsty Maccoll (2001) Edited version

please welcome kirsty mccall this time school quarry silent new york [Applause] [Music] costa mccoll had one of the most unique voices in british pop [Music] she loved music and investigated all sorts of areas of music uh not because she wanted to be some sort of a swap but because she enjoyed it you know i don't want to change the world i'd put it up there with morrissey and people like that and across the road from shane mcgowan you know that kind of caliber [Music] songwriting [Applause] [Music] well kirsty was very honest um you know what you saw with custody that that was it you know there was she was no way was she hypocritical two-faced and she would tell you to your face what she thought but in the nicest way she was quite tough in many ways but she was also like a sort of child and very vulnerable in a way and covered it over i think with this kind of the side of toughness [Music] i'm going to verizon [Music] [Applause] columbia [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you for the days those endless days those sacred days you gave me kirsty mccall was born in autumn 1959 the daughter of choreographer jean newlove and the radical playwright and folk revivalist ewen mccoll the writer of classic ballads like dirty old town and the first time ever i saw your face ewan left jean shortly after kirsty was born and began a new family with folk singer peggy seeger i grew up with my mum and my brother my brother's nine years older than me so he left home and was about 17. i didn't go to a proper school till i was eight because i had really bad asthma and i used to go to school for mentally and physically handicapped children so i was sort of pretty much on my own with my mum [Music] she was a very definite person and she was pretty independent i didn't live with my dad because he'd split up with my mum when i was you know tiny so it there was kind of like i mean he'd come around at weekends to visit you know and tell me about all his gigs and all his glory and um i felt a bit kind of like it had nothing to do with me really he would come and tell us everything that he was doing but our life was so difficult with the asthma never knowing you know whether she was going to be rushed to hospital or not that we couldn't really take again and we'd think well that's nice for you but um thank you but you know we've got our own priorities came home one day and found kirsty reading a penguin book i think it was called man and woman which is about uh sexuality and it was like one of the you know the penguin science series and uh she was i don't know i think she was four and a half or five or something and um or maybe no she must have been older than that because we don't yeah but she could read and and uh we didn't know that she could read like quite bizarre her reading and her arithmetic apparently are that of a nine to nine and a half year old child this in spite of the fact of course that she's hardly had any schooling because of her asthma yes what about your other school i'm telling you didn't like that very much no why not once finally well enough to attend school full time kirsty found herself at croydon comprehensive she escaped from this new tough world through pop music i'd get home from school and listen to records and i'd spend every waking moment was listening to music i got heavily into phil spector and um that sort of wall of sound and i think it goes along really with the kind of whole beach boys thing all the harmonies you know the sort of choral music really it's kind of you know popcorn music i wasn't really into folk music it wasn't particularly because i you know i had anything to prove against my dad or anything it was just because i was a different generation and you know i grew up listening to radio one and stuff and my dad hated pop music with vengeance and he couldn't tolerate it you know he was very intolerant of anything that wasn't his thing my old man was a proud old man at home on the foundry floor until the day they paid him off and showed him to the door you and michael was really the the father of the british folk revival in the 50s and 60s in many ways he was he was a fearsome character an intimidating character you know he he was very aware of of who he was and what he wanted and how music should be played he said if you want what yours by right you'll have to struggle with all your might they'll rob you blind if you don't fight son that was my old man there were three kinds of music that he thought were good there was there was classical music and folk music traditional foam music and um jazz and that was it everything else was rubbish as far as he was concerned so it didn't sit too well with either me or kirsty because we were both quite into the charts and pop music [Music] in 1978 kirsty left croydon art college after less than a year and briefly became mandy dout the backing singer for local croydon punk band the drug addicts [Applause] i did see her in her first guise in a band called drug addicts which i went to see when i was 16. and there was a lot of sepal curl type makeup uh she didn't quite suit punk rock uh she was much too savvy i think for that kind of angst i was just the kind of token girl really in that group but they approached stiff records about a record deal and um stiff thought they weren't very good so they they sort of said no don't like that don't bother you know and then they rang at me and said well we liked you we weren't very keen on the band you know have you got any songs and i lied and said oh yeah loads at stiff we tried to sign songwriters [Music] the label had been started with the intention of giving giving a chance to a lot of people who would never got through they wouldn't even got through reception in the major labels in those days we seemed to see something in them that other people perhaps hadn't she fitted perfectly we didn't have any girls who wrote and her kind of attitude which was kind of fairly in your face a bit you know she wasn't like that's she wasn't sweet she wanted to interview the record company she obviously come with a kind of an attitude she wasn't just sitting there saying how wonderful to get a record contract the first thing i had at was they don't know which did very well on airplay and i remember i remember seeing music week and it was between wings and abba at number two in the airplay charts i thought wow that is like fantastic and i think it got all the way up to number 72 in the chart which was just my luck because there was a distribution strike at the time and so it wasn't actually available in the shops [Music] her second single you caught me out also failed to chart and shortly after its release kirsty left stiff records kirsty after we released a couple of her records she felt that i think she felt that we weren't doing as good a job as she thought it could be done kirsty's exit from stiff set the pattern for the fraught relationships she was to enjoy with five different record companies throughout her career in 1981 she released her debut album desperate character for major label polidor her first hit sounded as if she was still part of stiff's stable of witty character songwriters with their house blend of music wool and pub rock [Music] cuz [Music] when the record company saw this the single happening they then sort of came down like like wolves like a pack of wolves and you know immediately start trying to change her image and everybody thought well let's make her into some kind of like little teen queen and uh you could kirsty wasn't into that you know she would she would fight that tooth and nail for women in the industry it's much more based on looks and um and sexuality um and the pressure to to conform to that is uh is overwhelming wary of being packaged as a pop star kirsty was an uncertain front woman her confidence was shredded by the stage fright she suffered in ireland on her first tour so when we got there she started to get this uh terrible stage fright you know before i think on the plane she got stage fright on the way over and uh i think the first the first gig we've done i think she had finished in the half hour and we had to send her out again to do some more songs i didn't have any confidence at all as a performing artist i was excruciatingly shy i had no self-confidence whatsoever and i found it terrifying because i think an audience goes in expecting some kind of bravado which i didn't have the thing is the more nervous i got the worse i was because you can't breathe when you're very nervous and if you can't breathe you can't sing when she came back from ireland kirsty swore she'd never tour again she went back in the studio to record the songs for her next polidor album with a new producer in a week we cut five songs the lyrics were very sharp and it wasn't um sort of although there's nothing wrong with this it wasn't the simple pop song of uh of um of ooby doo i love you you super duper person you when i was a kid the well-known successful female singers in britain they'd all be singing these big overblown ballads about how they were going to die if he left them and i used to you know i grew up with my mom and it was like well i know loads of people who live with single mothers and none of them have died i got sick of hearing you know songs written by men pretending how women would feel without men you know i wanted it to write songs as a woman you know writing about it how it really is in my experience kirsty delivered her second album to polidor but the label declined to release it and dropped her it wasn't um commercial enough for them a lot of record companies had this problem with kirsty you know they had a woman you know who was a beautiful looking woman who could write great lyrics who could sing great it would actually produce her own things and who gave you very intelligent lyrics and they still weren't happy they said the curses should do something and she thought it wasn't a very good idea she would just say so and it was very straight up not political she wasn't very good at maneuvering in that kind of way and and i just don't think they could handle it which meant that um her relationship with record companies would always start off quite brightly and just gradually tail off you know kirsty didn't like rejection first time she left stiff it was her own decision um so when she you know polidor dropping her really i think had a bad effect on her she didn't you know she wasn't able to entirely swallow that and you know she drifted for a while at that point seven times in seven days i've sat and wished my life away i know the greatness it comes and goes but the sun don't shine and the snow [Music] excels and the boring boys and the vicious girls you know it leaves me sick but it's a bozo's world then there's always the cash selling your soul for some trash smiling at people that you cannot stand you're in demand your 15 minutes starts now city banker [Music] how you got so holy and you came so thin the sunday papers every week the silly words you love to speak the tacky photos and the phony smiles it's a bozo's world and you're [Music] smiling at people that you cannot stand you're in demand you're 15 minutes stuck now then there's always [Music] your 15 minutes starts now do [Music] in 1983 kirsty resigned to stiff her first job was to work with their new protege comedienne tracy ullman on a remake of kirsty's first single for the label [Music] [Applause] [Music] is cause they don't know about us if you listen to a first singles it's clear that she's been listening to the shangri-las and i was kind of like girly bands from the from the 60s and that pop sensibility went through everything she did i think she was really good here for a great turn kirsty went on to produce tracy ullman and both released versions of kirsty's comeback [Music] single [Music] later in 1983 kirsty volunteered to sing on an album by one of her favorite bands simple minds in the studio she met the producer steve lillywhite steve was soon to become both her husband and her producer i heard the album that they dropped her on it also all sounded a bit one-dimensional to me and i think when i said that she said well you do better then and i said all right and she said i've got this song that billy bragg wrote it's uh it's a great song but it sounds like a demo i know i can make it a pop song [Applause] [Music] she suggested i came out to see her and we would you know we would rewrite the lyrics and uh but she could only do it in the morning i wasn't much of a morning person i'm still not much of a morning person but she said come running off cook your fried breakfast so i went round to her house and uh she was living in shepherd's bush at the time and she done a fried breakfast and i don't know extra verse foreign when i first heard new england uh it just sounded like this immense shimmering pop song and i was really pleased because it kind of proved i could write pop songs without having to do all the jump to all the hoops and make the expensive records celebration of new england like tranza turns a a good song into a grey song [Music] soon after a new england went top 10 kirstie gave birth to the first of two sons later in 1985 kirsty lost her record contract when stiff went bankrupt for the next three years she put her solo career on hold to raise her young sons jamie and louie [Music] i got asked to work with a lot of interesting people around that time like this you know a lot of people i really admired like the smiths and talking heads those became very productive relationships because they weren't just like doing a backing vocal gig they asked me because they wanted my vocal arrangements because i do a kind of one woman beach boys thing that technique could have only been done with one person because she knew how to stack a voice and it was a very clever thing that she'd worked out it was very deliberate the way a voice sounded and if you've got a bunch of people singing those harmonies if she'd map them out it wouldn't be near as cool it wouldn't be right it was this whole thing that um was almost like a keyboard without with a voice on it chords and movement within the course [Music] when she was in the studio she was clearly in charge even it was a my record she would come in and she would sort of you know get in there and you know do that do this okay now come on we're all going up the pub now you know so she was quite uh she you know she had a very uh formidable personality i remember uh about half three in the morning me and kirsty and keith richard playing every brothers songs and we're playing it and just say the keys the key's too low keep too low change the key so change the key and then she's like no no no go down a little bit and then you go no no no go do it like you were doing it before but just stop one and it was like sort of that is what we do now it isn't what you were doing and keith richard looking over to me kind of like this sort of hound dog expression sort of i thought this is brilliant she's berating keith richards she's kicking his ass little known fact about kirsty mccall that the um the the album the joshua tree kirsty uh was over there when i was helping finish off mixing that album and and uh and the running order needed to be done she sequenced the joshua tree which is to say that she ordered all the songs you know your your hope for your album is that it will always be greater than the sum of its parts but that is a kind of miracle that only happens in the last moment you you sort of you can plan it but it may not happen and it wasn't happening and for the joshua tree and when she came in and she organized it and it worked as you know as an old-fashioned album and a beginning middle and end almost shock horror and uh we asked her you know how did you know what did she do how did she figured out she said i figured it out i said how did you do that she says my favorite song my second favorite song my third favorite song my fourth favorite song it just went on [Music] at christmas 1987 kirsty finally returned to center stage with a collaboration that made her a household name [Music] but the wind goes right through you it's no place for the old when you first took my hand on a cold christmas eve you promised me broadway was waiting for me when the pogues recorded the song first we had a woman bass player in demand and she sang the duet with chain on the demo and uh i remember saying this would benefit from a different voice on it you know and i said someone like kirsty mccall i just thought bang yeah well a brilliant idea you know you scan value you might get your treatment as you i mean like well brilliant present oliver and i'll design you know kirsty could take the proverbial out of herself which she did loads of times and um you know she had a sense of fun about everything there was no way kirsty uh saw herself as some you know rock star she was not impressed by celebrity that's one thing you can say about kirsty she really wasn't um for her a person was was a person whether they were [Music] rich and famous or not she introduced me to all these brilliant people and she would regularly invite us around for these wild parties you know whether it be in the garden of a sunday afternoon or around the kitchen table with several hundred bottles of red wine good food good wine and good company one time i was talking to someone at the foot the stairs there and another friend came out and said i've just just seen bob hoskins bob hoskins has just been i'm like oh yeah and the guy said he's coming in he's coming up he's going to speak to here he comes when i turn around it's actually lionel bart it's not bob but he looks a bit like bubbles he's a little short bulgy but it's lionel barr who wrote oliver you know and all that incredible stuff you know she was a great dj and she would play songs all the time um and i don't think in 10 years of marriage i ever played a record kirsty had this one album of latin american music that as far as i can remember her dad had given to her and that she used to sort of bring this out usually late in the you know marathon record playing sessions and she particularly loved this her parties were just fantastic she was a great cook a bonviver of every description really yeah just brilliant fun and usually ended up with the jukebox being pumped up and everyone dancing for the for their lives really come all the way from manchester they're called happy monday featuring a very special guest kirstie mccall the songs allelia and his number 30. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hallelujah [Music] kirsty's collaboration with the kings of baggy music influenced the lead track from her second virgin album electric landlady we're just shooting the video for the first single of the album and the single is called walking down madison so that's where we've been all day walking up and down madison shooting the video watching people it's a great place for watching people and that's what inspired the song so check it out me [Music] no [Music] with the intention of her writing on it just to get her opinion you know and i said i've done this really good backing track check it out and um she called me back a couple of days later and said i've done some really great words for it and oh it's going to be fantastic and um i didn't mind but i was surprised because i was i was kind of intending it to be an instrumental trap [Music] oh [Music] i think it was a good example of um the way kirsty wrote because she had spent quite a lot of time in new york um because steve was working with a rolling stones and she was around and she was writing about what she saw which is what she did if there was one legacy that kirsty had from euron it would be in terms of songwriting in that kind of the value that she put on lyrics and the compassion she had for people you know um what she felt about people and bringing the characters to life [Music] electric landlady for me it wasn't quite as focused as kite and i think it slightly suffered from being a little bit bitty we used a lot of different musicians on different songs so there wasn't that continuity electric landlady wasn't as well received as kite and her relationship with virgin founded soon after virgin were bought out by emi records kirsty i think throughout her career was dropped more than once and it wasn't you know it was you know i don't know why she well the reason she was she didn't sell the records that people thought that she should sell she always met with uh a degree of success and it never seemed to go beyond that um that level and um i think she found that really frustrating and um i think it would really knock her back each time and she would see that as an indictment of what she'd done kirsty was once more at home without a recording contract but she continued to write and in early 1994 kirsty signed to ztt her fourth record label they released one under-promoted album titanic days [Music] to ride together and i think we were both going through difficult situations in in our marriages at the time and his songs the record kind of developed into kind of almost the kind of concept album she was having a bit of a lonely time because some of her relationships had gone wrong and others were not working out and you know she had a a couple of years of being quite down she was um as much as she was a brilliant laugh she had her depressive [Music] side [Music] an empty bench in soho [Music] there's like this child like quality about that was kind of like a hurt sort of child you know and i think that her voice i used to say to her voice she sounded like a little girl sometimes when she's saying even though the lyrics are obviously of the words of a woman and um and quite cynical in some ways but she still delivered them with this kind of child-like vulnerability which i think was it was a contrast that made it so appealing [Music] [Applause] [Music] is she had quite a few miserable songs and um i think they're some of her best stuff and i think for the people that really liked her i think they're the things that spoke to them most and people don't know about them they think of her as the girl who did chip shop or the girl in fairy tale he's very up and kind of full on you know and they never saw that um the vulnerable side of her and she was very vulnerable the song that really should have been on the titanic day's album was dear john i think it was it was really kirsty as a lyricist of the song admitting finally that her marriage was over i remember when she first sung me the the lyrics and i put my arms around her and she cried and i cried because i knew that it was the end [Music] but it's concerning me [Music] you may not believe me but it's the hardest thing i've ever done my eyes see other glories other dreams and other stories [Music] and i want to live before i die dear john [Music] 10 years old i still dream and we still hesitate the passions are but gone [Music] oh dear john seems we have a bad day every day i want to sleep my life away this is [Music] i never wanted to be cruel but i'm so tired of being a strong one and i don't always have the energy and you always leave it up to me just [Music] oh when she split up with um uh steve um she spent more and more time in cuba and i i think as she got found winters in britain just more depressing she began to go to places like that in the winter more and more and just fell in love with the whole thing the vibe the rhythm the harmony the lyrics [Music] i think this scene really was in her soul to do the whole sort of culture and the lifestyle of those countries you know is something that she that she really could relate to it's that very kind of like relaxed free and easy sort of like you know don't let things get on top of you too much don't worry too much about stuff life's there to be enjoyed she continued making trips out to cuba all the time you know and helped people both financially and tried to help with the the cuban solidarity fund which is to get this um ridiculous blockade that the us has on cuba and i suppose she played her part and was playing her part in whatever way to try and get that lifted kirsty used to go to cuba for holidays and take with her a couple of cases or so full of shoes and children's clothes that she bought around oxfams and whatever across the time across the months and hardly anything for herself to wear and she was taking it for the kids the poor kids that she'd met in the street after an extensive period of traveling cuba inspired her first album in six years the latin-flavored tropical brainstorm disillusioned by her checkered experience of record companies kirsty funded the recording of the album herself working with long-time collaborators pete glennister and dave ruffy the v2 record label released the finished album which was critically praised and found her a new audience in italy and spain well i think kirsty was driven by as a songwriter to be great in the eyes of her dad even though on one level she reacted against his folk roots and by sort of adopting this rock and roll stance and trying to make a big point of not being like anything that she thought a dad would like um i think she was always battling between these two things of one wanting to please her and one want to be the rebellious daughter and i think in a way her adopting the latin music you know later on was a kind of way of of connecting to sort of folk music outside [Music] on the back i'll take you for a ride i know a little [Music] said in place shoes [Music] no way jose [Music] i said honey let's stay right here she's a very sensitive woman you know and she did get hurt easily you know the great england two columbian hill that's a classic kirstie's met some guy and they go to um they go to watch england playing colombia and the guy who goes to the goes to the toilet and his his friend sort of tells kirsty that he's married he's got he's got two kids so she finds out just in time you know because this guy was going to sort of like you know i wanted to take you know go back to hers and everything and blah blah blah and so you know she well that's it okay she kicks him to the curb and i knew she'd had a date tonight how'd your day go last night i said well i'll play you this if you like i wrote this last night [Music] you lied about your life you never mentioned your three children [Music] with her career on the rise in the beginnings of a new emotional stability kirsty's personal life took a turn for the better when she met fellow musician james knight i've never seen her happier than this last year year and a half whatever it is and uh brilliant and i think that that's they were so um well suited to each other although she's an inc was an incredibly independent woman um she was always happier when she had a guy nobody ever told kirstie what to do because they're all too frightened of her but she weren't frightening she wasn't frightening to me anyway particularly men and uh she needed that at times to go actually it's time to go home or actually you know really maybe do this and also just to have somebody who is 150 completely and utterly behind [Music] she tended to get very nervous kind of days before she was doing shows before i met her i know that she used to suffer it really badly to the point where she just didn't want to play live at all um and i think the difference in the certainly while we were together the main difference was the fact that if she only had to look over while she was on stage and i was two meters away from her to the point where the last show she actually really came off stage and said that was the best show that she'd ever done [Music] pop singer kirsty mccall has been killed in an accident in mexico she was just 41. it's understood she died after being hit by a speedboat while swimming [Music] she had such a incredible voice it really it really sort of pulled at you you know and it really anything that she was singing you really you you really got inside it because you were drawn in by that voice because she was her own woman you know and an incredible example i think to women she knew her art she knew she knew how to write she knew how to compel songs she knew how to produce them she knew how to sing on them nowadays in order to be like either a male or female pop star you don't need any of these qualities they just want you blank and then they say now we're going to paint the picture for you [Music] it was only um in the outpouring of emotion after after a death that she finally did get the level of respect uh that she deserved and the fact she touched so many people uh during a a career um would suggest that what she was doing was was was was going deeper in people's lives and just buying records she's unable to lunge today madame miss otis regret she's unable to launch today [Applause] she is sorry to be delayed but by steaming down a lover's lane she's straight madame there's so disregards she's unable to launch today [Applause] when she woke up and found that her dream of love was gone madame she ran to the man who had led her so far astray and from under her velvet gown she drew a gun and shot her lover down madame [Applause] she's unable to launch today [Music] [Applause] [Music] so when the mob came and got her and dragged her from the jail madam they strung her upon the old will of christ away and the moment before she died she lifted up her lovely head and cried madame met so disregret she's unable to lunge [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: Mandy Doubt

Views: 5,135

Keywords:

Id: AkQXgZKNKPg

Length: 50min 19sec (3019 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 30 2020