Interview from The StarPhoenix - Saskatoon, Canada
In the midst of upheaval, Warnes reaches out
By CAM FULLER, THE STARPHOENIX September 13, 2011
Jennifer Warnes in concert
Sunday, Sept. 18, 8 p.m.
Monday, Sept. 19, 8 p.m.
Broadway Theatre
Tickets $48
Box office: 652-6556
On a day after an earthquake, two days before a hurricane and in the midst of an economic meltdown, Jennifer Warnes was explaining why she’s touring for the first time in two years — in Canada, of all places.
It’s because the world is in a “blender.”
“I can’t stand still,” Warnes said from her home near Venice, Calif.
“I think making connections to people is crucial right now, just crucial.”
If a song can help — impeccably sung by an artist who sees music as a means to an end — the world might not be in such bad shape after all.
Warnes grew up in California, a child prodigy whose voice made strangers cry in church.
“I didn’t have any clue what was going on other than it was effective and I didn’t have to wash the dishes with my brothers and sisters.”
Her father rebuffed a recording contract offered to his seven-year-old daughter. She’s grateful he did “because the music business is just a corrupt, insane path and it would hurt a child, it would hurt any child.”
She seemed destined for opera but chose a path that went in some unexpected directions — songwriter, folksinger, recording artist, Broadway (the lead in Hair), TV (the Smothers Brothers). By the late 1980s, she had two Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe and had lent her voice to three songs that won Academy Awards: It Goes Like It Goes from Norma Rae, Up Where We Belong (with Joe Cocker) from An Officer and a Gentleman and Time of My Life from Dirty Dancing.
But her movie music career hardly means a thing compared to her association with Leonard Cohen. Her career was well-established by the time she introduced herself to him in a hotel lobby in Hartford, Conn. Their friendship would change her work and her life.
“I read people well and I felt like his eyes were like falling into the Grand Canyon, and I got it. I got that we would meet and know one another. I knew that.”
Some time later, Cohen asked her to sing backup on a tour of his. Later, she had a smash success with her album of Cohen songs, Famous Blue Raincoat.
They stay in touch mainly by phone and email, and have shared the same housekeeper for 25 years. It’s a treasure to know him, she says.
“I would never attempt in an article to sum up anything I feel about him. But he’s a gentle man, he’s generous, he’s kind, he’s tender, he sees through what you’re trying to ask before you ask it.
“ I learned how to offer more to a person than I normally would have done and to offer more to life.”
Cohen, she says, caused her to “dump my aspirations to do anything superficial.” She did some of that anyway, to pay the bills, but Cohen’s influence never waned.
“He, in a way, derailed a perfectly innocent career and turned it into a career with integrity,” she laughs.
She laughs generously throughout the interview, contradicting any presumptions that she’s some kind of unapproachable icon.
She likes to say that music means less to her than people think — it’s connecting through music that attracts her. Other misconceptions amount to “99 per cent of what’s in the press,” she says, laughing again.
“For some reason, I’ve very intentionally hidden who I was all my life. Because I didn’t want to be broken.
“Half of my peers are dead. I saw that. I thought survival was a really important attribute. A lot of the fragile ones didn’t make it. Fifty per cent.”
Warnes, who put her life on hold in her mother’s declining years and hasn’t written a song since, cherishes the comfort Cohen gave her at her mother’s funeral. We don’t get to choose where love comes from, he told her: “Your only proper response is to say yes, and you always said yes to her offer of love. You got love from the one place we all want it.”
Warnes can finally see a day when the pain lets go and she does feel like writing again. In the meantime, she finds songs she likes and has a new album that’s almost finished — but there’s so much tumult in the music industry she doesn’t know when it might come out.
For now, what she’s most interested in is the unique challenge of the upcoming tour. With only a guitarist and bass player accompanying her, there’s nowhere to hide. She likes that pressure.
“It’s the first time I’ve ever toured with so little music. And I’m older now and absolute empty air is all I have to cling to, really. So I’m kind of excited about it. I’m going to show the audience who I am.”
cfuller@thestarphoenix.com
Monday, Sept. 19, 8 p.m.
Broadway Theatre
Tickets $48
Box office: 652-6556
On a day after an earthquake, two days before a hurricane and in the midst of an economic meltdown, Jennifer Warnes was explaining why she’s touring for the first time in two years — in Canada, of all places.
It’s because the world is in a “blender.”
“I can’t stand still,” Warnes said from her home near Venice, Calif.
“I think making connections to people is crucial right now, just crucial.”
If a song can help — impeccably sung by an artist who sees music as a means to an end — the world might not be in such bad shape after all.
Warnes grew up in California, a child prodigy whose voice made strangers cry in church.
“I didn’t have any clue what was going on other than it was effective and I didn’t have to wash the dishes with my brothers and sisters.”
Her father rebuffed a recording contract offered to his seven-year-old daughter. She’s grateful he did “because the music business is just a corrupt, insane path and it would hurt a child, it would hurt any child.”
She seemed destined for opera but chose a path that went in some unexpected directions — songwriter, folksinger, recording artist, Broadway (the lead in Hair), TV (the Smothers Brothers). By the late 1980s, she had two Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe and had lent her voice to three songs that won Academy Awards: It Goes Like It Goes from Norma Rae, Up Where We Belong (with Joe Cocker) from An Officer and a Gentleman and Time of My Life from Dirty Dancing.
But her movie music career hardly means a thing compared to her association with Leonard Cohen. Her career was well-established by the time she introduced herself to him in a hotel lobby in Hartford, Conn. Their friendship would change her work and her life.
“I read people well and I felt like his eyes were like falling into the Grand Canyon, and I got it. I got that we would meet and know one another. I knew that.”
Some time later, Cohen asked her to sing backup on a tour of his. Later, she had a smash success with her album of Cohen songs, Famous Blue Raincoat.
They stay in touch mainly by phone and email, and have shared the same housekeeper for 25 years. It’s a treasure to know him, she says.
“I would never attempt in an article to sum up anything I feel about him. But he’s a gentle man, he’s generous, he’s kind, he’s tender, he sees through what you’re trying to ask before you ask it.
“ I learned how to offer more to a person than I normally would have done and to offer more to life.”
Cohen, she says, caused her to “dump my aspirations to do anything superficial.” She did some of that anyway, to pay the bills, but Cohen’s influence never waned.
“He, in a way, derailed a perfectly innocent career and turned it into a career with integrity,” she laughs.
She laughs generously throughout the interview, contradicting any presumptions that she’s some kind of unapproachable icon.
She likes to say that music means less to her than people think — it’s connecting through music that attracts her. Other misconceptions amount to “99 per cent of what’s in the press,” she says, laughing again.
“For some reason, I’ve very intentionally hidden who I was all my life. Because I didn’t want to be broken.
“Half of my peers are dead. I saw that. I thought survival was a really important attribute. A lot of the fragile ones didn’t make it. Fifty per cent.”
Warnes, who put her life on hold in her mother’s declining years and hasn’t written a song since, cherishes the comfort Cohen gave her at her mother’s funeral. We don’t get to choose where love comes from, he told her: “Your only proper response is to say yes, and you always said yes to her offer of love. You got love from the one place we all want it.”
Warnes can finally see a day when the pain lets go and she does feel like writing again. In the meantime, she finds songs she likes and has a new album that’s almost finished — but there’s so much tumult in the music industry she doesn’t know when it might come out.
For now, what she’s most interested in is the unique challenge of the upcoming tour. With only a guitarist and bass player accompanying her, there’s nowhere to hide. She likes that pressure.
“It’s the first time I’ve ever toured with so little music. And I’m older now and absolute empty air is all I have to cling to, really. So I’m kind of excited about it. I’m going to show the audience who I am.”
cfuller@thestarphoenix.com
