i & r

Imogen Heap
Barcode - Issue 1
'99
(excerpts from 3-page interview)

Is it true that you are a classically trained pianist, did your family push you in this direction?
Basically, there's a lot of family influence because it was very musical and we had a piano in the house... at one point we had two.  And we were all into guitars and harps and mum just collected tons of instruments and eventually we got into clarinets and flutes and oboes.  So just through playing and feeling like it was natural that a person should play an instrument I took to playing the piano really, really early, I've got pictures of me on my Granddad's lap, so really early maybe three or four.  That was just me plodding around on the piano, and I never really left it since then, everywhere I went I was being drawn to the piano, then that let me to thinking, right well I have to get as much playing the piano in my life as possible, so I started lessons and later on learnt the cello and clarinet but never really kept it up.  It wasn't until a lot later that I started to write songs when I kind of felt like I had a personality!

So at what age did you feel as though you wanted to actually record something of your own?
Um, none of this business of being a rock star, it was so far from my head at the time.  All I was caring about at that age was playing as much as possible.  It was just something I loved to do, it was never like 'Ooh this what I'll be when I'm bigger.'  I never really listened to the radio so it wasn't like I had a mentor or somebody that I went 'Wow, I wanna be like her or him.'

So you have no direct influences?
I don't think directly apart from again my family and just listening to a lot of classical music.  Pop music never really excited me that much....

(excerpt 2 - page 2)

Working with Nik Kershaw and Dave Stewart too, did you actually feel in control of the reigns and did you find it easy working with other people on your songs?
Yeah, I mean they're all real professionals and y'know, if you go into a studio and you feel like your being stifled and you feel like your claustrophobic and they're pushing their sound against you then you kind of go, huh and that's not very professional of them.  But no I never felt like that with Nik.  I mean occasionally he'd say, like any producer would say, 'I don't like that bit, can you go and write a new bit' and I'd be like 'Well, nobody's ever asked me to do that, I don't know if I can do that.' But erm, he taught me a lot, he taught me a lot about song structure.  Before I went in with him I just used to write songs that just went on for hours and hours and hours with five choruses and twenty verses and millions of words and he would make me realise that I didn't have to do that.  I had to go through that structure thing but now I find it quite restricting and I'm trying to get a bit out of the structure and just write a few words, maybe even just twenty, like the track "Sleep" which is very, very simple, it's just like a train of thought, and get into more of that kind of thing, so it's a bit more for me.....

Let's talk about your debut album iMegaphone.  It's a very soul-baring album, was there a lot that you needed to get out of your system?
I guess, looking back on it, I probably did, yeah.  But I didn't write it like that.  And a lot of it people say  'Oh, it's quite sad,'  but it's not really, the only songs that are sad, or angry maybe are "Getting Scared," quite angry, "Rake It In" is angry, erm, but whenever I write a song I can only write it if I'm out of the feeling, if I feel like I can cope with it.  I've never analysed it before but I write a song like "Getting Scared," which is basically about a few things which has happened over my life, a collection of these type of people, bullies basically, how they annoy me and collectively have moulded me.  And sometimes you don't wanna be moulded in a certain kind of way and you don't wanna have to feel like you can't walk out of the house without wearing a skirt because your legs are too lanky.  So silly little things like that, but even to this day I can't wear a skirt I have to wear trousers, and I'm sure my legs are fine, my boyfriend says they're fine, anyway.  Songs like that I kind of took a while to look back and go hmmm! And when I felt like  'Yeah, that really pissed me off'  then I'd write about it.  But usually when I finish a song I'm Ok with it and I can see it written down and I can put in behind me.

(excerpt 3 - page 3)

Today most female musicians are all doing this unintelligble club music.  It's refreshing to hear you writing 'songs.' Do you have a viewpoint on how female artist are doing in the business currently?
Well, personally I'm bored with a lot of things.  I like what Alanis Morissette is trying to do now, I think she's very brave.  Respect to her.  Everyone is different and everyone who tries to be the same will fail.  I haven't tried to be anything I've just been who I am.  And I haven't had my record company, thank God going, 'We want you to sound like etc. etc. because she's sold like lots of records.'  So I've had huge leeway to do whatever I feel like.  I'm just very bored of general radio at the moment, I think pop is just getting out of hand, most of pop music's not particularly gone anywhere for the past 10 years.

Don't you get pissed off, because your music's a lot better but is unlikely to get played. 
I don't know if it's, maybe it's not better.  I don't know.

Musically, it certainly is!
You think so, Ok well maybe you're right but I don't wanna, you know, cast off all those millions of musicians.  But I would prefer to hear my kind of music on the radio.

What can we expect from you next, any time scales as to when you will write new material and when it might be released?
Well, I'm already starting to write, depending on a release depends upon how long they want to push this record for if it does kind of return to England and people are liking it, there is a lot of variables, I don't know.  I want to get into recording as soon as possible.  I've got tons of stuff, tons of ideas......