MuchMusic 1998-05-04 By Sook-Yin Lee "Interview transcript" (Applause and Cheering) Sook-Yin Lee: This shows you as a pan-universal citizen, with references to Africa, Asia, and on her eyes, Martian eyes, and Bjork, she's here in the environment. You have returned to your home country of Iceland? Bjork: Yes. Sook-Yin Lee: What made you move back home? Bjork: Well, I was always going to live in Iceland and I'm fiercely patriotic. Then I was going to go to London five years ago, just for a short visit, but I loved it so much and I met so many brilliant people that I guess I stayed a little bit longer than I was going to. But then the elastic had just stretched a bit too much and I just had to go home. Sook-Yin Lee: Well, you must be like a national treasure there. Like is it easy for you to live in peace in Iceland? Bjork: Yeah, it's so low-key there that the prime minister, you meet him in the supermarket. There's no way to get the distance of sort of stardom there, I guess. Sook-Yin Lee: People are all respectful of you. That's good. The first song, "Hunter," kicks off with some lyrics, "thought I could organize freedom. How Scandinavian of me." Bjork: Yeah. Sook-Yin Lee: What does that mean? Bjork: Well, I don't know what it's like here in Canada. Do you do jokes about people from The States? Like the French and the English kicking the piss out of each other? Sook-Yin Lee: Sure, yeah. Bjork: Yeah. I don't know what it's like here, but in Iceland, the people from Sweden, we think they're really not cool at all and they just have got no sense of humour, are really organized... Sook-Yin Lee: Do they have a tendency to try to organize freedom? Bjork: Yes, like everything. And you can't organize everything. So I think in that song, I was sort of... thinking that I could even organize freedom, just like very stupid. Quite Swedish, you know. Sook-Yin Lee: You were saying -- I read an article that said that Iceland is more anarchistic than Sweden? Is that right? Bjork: We're generalizing things, like cliches, you know, things about nationalities, you know. But I guess Iceland and the other Scandinavian countries, compared to Sweden, we're kind of the punks, you know? We never had the first democracy in the world; we don't want anybody to boss us around; we have no army, and people are pretty fiercely independent there. Sook-Yin Lee: I was just in Denmark, and I found it very progressive. There's like free bicycles everywhere, age of consent is 15, just more progressive than in North America. And it sounds like Iceland is even more so, more so free. Bjork: It's not -- I mean Sweden and Denmark are very -- socially, like social welfare, you know, and Iceland is not so much like that. We were a colony until 50 years ago, and we... that's what makes us different from the other countries. They're more like into... they've got like classes and they've got royalty, and they've got like power and hierarchy and all these things. We haven't got that in Iceland, you know. We're -- we're, I guess, a little bit similar to the Irish in that sense. We wouldn't mind, you know, putting several bombs into the Danish palace. Sook-Yin Lee: The Royal Palace... Bjork: Yeah. I'm exaggerating, but we're more -- Sook-Yin Lee: Radical. Bjork: For 600 years, we were treated like shit, so we're pretty... Sook-Yin Lee: So do you feel like a free person? Bjork: Yeah. I guess we have been 50 years independent, and we're fierce about it. We're -- we're -- yeah, I think ecology, nature and people like my family are still hunting and stuff, but we're still quite techno. Sook-Yin Lee: In the song "alarm call," you sing, "I am no f'ing Buddhist..." so you're not a Buddhist? You don't like Buddhism or what is that a response to? You don't want to be pegged into a particular religion? Bjork: Yeah. I guess I'm a lot curious about the states we can put ourselves into and the fact that we only have one lifetime to sort of go there. It's about sort of experimenting and pushing yourself and living, I guess, "life to the full" or whatever. And then I took part, like I was asked to take part in this Tibetan... to support Tibet. I fully understood because being suppressed by a bigger country, it's something I can completely relate to. But then I thought, "okay, I want to know what I'm supporting here." I read a lot of books about Buddhists when I was a teenager, and then I got all into it again and it just made me really angry in a lot of senses. And just -- every religion does and something about Buddhism, which is about living outside your real feelings, so you -- Sook-Yin Lee: The repression of feelings? Bjork: Not repression but more sort of -- other people go on rollercoaster rides. They go really dark and they go really happy, and Buddhism seems to be about getting yourself in a state where you're just watching those things. You're more a voyeur of emotions; you don't go through it all. And I said, "uh-uh!" I'm going to check myself into that song. I want to go up to the sky and the darkest "f"... and so that song is -- I'm no "f'ing" Buddhist... but this is enlightenment. I can reach like a state of enlightenment without sort of checking myself out of life, you know. Sook-Yin Lee: You have always boldly gone and explored music. Is it important for you to create new music? Bjork: Yeah. I think a lot of singers -- I mean I guess I'm, first and last, a singer. I think a lot of singers, they look at themselves and they go into other people's music as visitors. So they go into other people's environment, I mean audio-style, and their voice is there in the middle and they're more like (indecipherable). But I guess I did that for very many years, by working with a lot of gorgeous people like The Sugarcubes and also people like sir Tricky or Howie "B" and all these things... and I guess it was about time to create your own home and sing in your own house, you know, with all the things around you that you are comfortable with, you know. I think it's more scary, but it's more rewarding. Sook-Yin Lee: We're going to take a listen to "Bacherolette" and then be back with Bjork after the video. (applause) (video played) (commercial break) (applause and cheering) Sook-Yin Lee: Bjork's latest album "Homogenic" has so many people involved, glass harmonica players, accordion players, so many different musicians involved. It seems a lot of your music sort of bridges experimental avant-garde music with mainstream music. How important is it for you to remain accessible throughout all of your musical experimentation? Bjork: When I was in music school as a kid, I got completely obsessed by all the people like Stackhouse and all the people who had really gone out of their way to be in a corner and sort of develop, you know, some really specific styles or... well, not styles but like just invent, like inventors. And, to be honest, if you look through my own private record collection, it's mostly just trainspotters, like some sort of albums that sold 7.5 copies or radio-techno or whatever. But I guess since I was little, I always liked communicating. And it's not really for me -- I mean I would have been doing completely different music if I wanted sort of mass... you know, everybody knows me. But I do like to go and hunt and go and discover and find some things that nobody has ever heard before and then go next to... go to visit the grandmothers and the kids and introduce them to it and say, "listen, guess what I found here?" like, you know, I found... you know, like the David Attenborough shows and Carl Sagan shows when they lift up the rocks... Sook-Yin Lee: Yes, exactly! That's right. Bjork: It's like a new species with eleven and a half legs and they can read and write... whatever, you know. I love that. It's like a mystery, a fairy-tale... Sook-Yin Lee: Yes, and you are like the person that turns the rock over and all these things come crawling out. Bjork: Thanks for the compliment. I like that sort of thing. Sook-Yin Lee: Yeah. We have a question here. Hi. My name is Kyle. I was curious with regards to the electronica scene. Do you feel at all like you're an innovator or that you have been ripped off by like Madonna with her new album doing like strings and beats, just like "Homogenic"? Bjork: It's funny, here in The States so many people are asking me this. I guess from your perspective, it looks a little bit like that. But for me, Madonna is doing completely different things from me. Not better or worse, nothing like that, but just so different. I also find it very strange how in America they deal with this word "electronica." I think it's so funny because in Europe, there's been electronica for 50 years, you know, as long as rock has been in America. Like there were experiments back in Cologne when, you know, like Little Richard and Buddy Holly were doing their strut on this side of the Atlantic. And for us it's... it seems like over here a lot of people are dealing with that like it was invented last year, you know. I find it very awkward to walk into something like tower records and find in the same -- it's like you have a whole rack of jazz and another whole rack of blues and then you've got a little rack and you have people like Tricky next to Prodigy next to tune limited next to Madonna, and I'm just like "what?!" From a European point of view, that would be like -- if all music that came from North America, even South America as well, had one rank, like we would have a whole rack with just like... I don't know, like German, like music from the '70s, and then another of... I don't know, like Italian house music and then one little rack that would have a bit of jazz, a bit of blues, a bit of rock and a bit of tango, you know. For us, that's just like very -- this electronica thing, I think it's really funny. But it proves once again that nobody is right and nobody is wrong. It's just different perspectives, you know, from that side of the Atlantic or here. Sook-Yin Lee: There's a tendency, too, I find, like in the media and in pop culture in North America, people tend to like put words, like descriptive words. "Okay, electronica, we've got that and we're going to sell that." There's a higher turnover. We look at artists and it's like one hit and then they're gone and it just seems so quickly that in pop culture things have its time and then they leave. But with your -- you have a big body of work. When I listen to your music, it's like looking at the work of Picasso, looking at their whole life and being able to see -- Bjork: Stop it! Stop it! I'm fainting! (laughing) Sook-Yin Lee: Like Picasso running around in his underwear, no clothes on, bald head... but are you satisfied with your body of work so far? Are you happy with it? Bjork: I think I must credit myself for being brave, but I still have very far to go, you know. I don't really listen to my records. I think I've got, maybe if I'm lucky, 50 years to experiment more and... but I think there have been some scary moments there, and I think I confronted them with as much courage as I could. Sook-Yin Lee: For sure. What are you going to be working on next in terms of music? Bjork: Well, I'm still working with Mark Bell. I think that's brilliant. With musical relationships, just like any relationship, friendships, whatever, you never know what's going to happen next. It's just like a force of nature and you have to let it go and the minute you start controlling it, it will just stick out its tongue at you and escape. So it seems like me and Mark have still got far to go, and we're doing cheeky music now, very sneaky. Sook-Yin Lee: Sneaky music? Bjork: Yeah, it's definitely about lifting up little rocks and... it's very micro. It's very sort of... Sook-Yin Lee: Quieter? Bjork: Yeah, very quiet. You have the whole rhythm section here and the chorus... more over here. Very... petit. Sook-Yin Lee: We're going to be ending off or -- talking about the video "Joga." Who is Joga? You made the song and in the credits, you thank Joga. Who is Joga? Bjork: Joga is my best friend. And she... I don't know what to say really. Sook-Yin Lee: She inspires you? Bjork: Completely. Yeah, I guess... yeah, I guess. Yeah, I'm just speechless. Like I tried to write that tune but, I mean, I just wanted mainly to write lyrics. It was just pathetic. I was like "her... her..." it was like "love... love..." I couldn't even put it into words. So, you know, it's -- yeah, it's probably the -- I think it's the fiercest love song I have written, I think. Sook-Yin Lee: Wow. Glad to have you in. Tomorrow night you're playing in Toronto at The Warehouse and then another date in Montreal, this Friday at The Metropolis. Thank you, Bjork. Good luck with all your musical adventures. Bjork: Thanks a lot. (applause)