http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/1996/11/23/brjork23.xml

Telegraph  1996-11-23

By Jan Moir


"'I've always been called weird'"


   Björk's success put Iceland in the charts and provoked an acid bomb
   from a crazed fan. Jan Moir meets a singer with attitude


ACCORDING to Björk, the main difference between the Icelanders and the 
British is that we have no energy whereas they are always zooming around 
full of vigour, like the thermal geysers which stud their land. They are 
a dynamic people, she claims, just like the Swedes.

The Swedes? "Yes! Like Neneh Cherry. She just blasts into a room. In 
Iceland, we are the same, although I was always the quiet one compared 
with everyone else. I was never the centre of attention, and that is 
still how I see myself now."

Oh, really? Today, she is wearing a blue plastic tube dress, zipped at 
the front from her throat to her ankles. "Very cosy," she says, although 
the stitching has burst at the waist and a little pillow of white belly 
mushrooms through the gap.

Her bare legs are stuffed into silver trainers and her hair is twisted 
into dozens of springy clumps, secured to her scalp with blue elastic 
bands. It makes her head look as though it has been colonised by a 
little army of Walnut Whips.

And her voice - a crazy collision of guttural Nordic and received 
Cockney - is so loud and clear, her conversation so frequently dipping 
into utter dottiness, that I have to fight the urge to make regular 
circuits of the hotel lounge, apologising to the sedate tea drinkers 
within earshot.

So far, we have all been treated to Björk's theories on alcohol - whisky 
brings up her "dark currents", cognac makes her "sharp", champagne keeps 
her happy and sometimes she could drink for 14 hours and end up "on the 
rooftops or jumping into the ocean". She has already explained how 
famous she is in her homeland - "I am the Lady Di of Iceland!" - and 
stood up to demonstrate the voice exercises she uses when her throat 
gets sore.

To the casual observer, there does not seem to be much difference 
between these therapeutic yelps and the noises she has made on both 
Debut and Post, the million-selling albums that have made her a star. On 
top of all this, her mobile phone - the loudest I have ever heard - 
rings at five-minute intervals and she does not feel it necessary either 
to answer it or switch it off.

"When I first came here, I thought British people were not human. I 
thought they were robots," she shouts, continuing on a cultural clash 
theme. "I was saved by Have I Got News For You." Pardon?

"Yes, I was. I would look at all these cold, grey men; no colour, no 
character. Then when they start talking, they are like gargoyles. They 
become full of life and very juicy and sparkling. And I began to 
understand everyone, although people still lie around everywhere, with 
no energy. Like you!"

True enough, I am practically prostrate on the sofa, quite possibly 
because I am trying to hide. She holds me up with her strong, little 
arms and orders a raw egg from a passing waiter.

"I need some protein," she says, bouncing up and down on her end of the 
sofa. She has just polished off two cappuccinos and a fruit salad 
platter and when her egg arrives, she knocks the top off and attempts to 
sip it in a dainty fashion, before apologising and scoffing the whole 
thing down. She wipes the strings of albumen off her chin with the back 
of her hand. Her phone screams. I feel myself sinking down the sofa 
again.

It has been a funny old year for Björk, who was named Best International 
Female Solo Artist at this year's Brit Awards. In February, she made 
headlines for attacking a female journalist at Bangkok Airport as she 
arrived - accompanied by her 10-year-old son Sindri - for a tour of 
south-east Asia. Back home, watching news footage of the two women 
scrabbling on the concourse floor, we all wondered if Björk had finally 
flipped, although her explanation today makes her behaviour 
understandable - if not advisable.

"She was rude to my son. She stuck a microphone in his face and asked 
him, all snotty, what it was like having me as a mother. Can you 
imagine? I don't care what people write or say about me, but you do not 
abuse my son. I swear to God, I cannot remember what happened; I just 
saw red. I am not proud of it, but I would do the same thing again."

In September, her celebrity provoked a much more sinister episode. A 
crazed American fan called Ricardo Lopez posted a sulphuric acid bomb 
from Florida to her home in west London. Police on both sides of the 
Atlantic searched for the device after v.

He had videoed himself making the bomb while talking about his obsessive 
love for Björk. After he had returned from posting the package, he 
switched on the camera again, held a pistol to his head and filmed his 
own suicide.

His parcel was found, leaking acid, in a south London sorting office. "I 
was more worried about my son than frightened," she says today, the 
first time she has talked at length about the incident.

"I had to sit down with Sindri and tell him there might be a certain 
parcel arriving and that he could not open it. When he asked why, I had 
to tell him there might be a bomb in it. Can you imagine if you were 10, 
and your mum told you there was a bomb coming to your house? It would 
always be in your dreams. It would be the most memorable thing in your 
childhood."

It made her feel guilty as a mother. "I do this awkward job - I am not a 
plumber or a nurse - and my kid has to deal with it."

On a wider level, it has made her apply a new rationale to her career, 
particularly on how she presents herself on stage and on screen. This 
morning, while editing the video for her new single, Possibly Maybe, she 
had insisted on a fantasy sequence being removed.

"It could have looked like I was presenting myself as a religious icon. 
Then some people might start cults and sending me different kinds of 
letters. I question everything now, although I am not saying I am 
responsible for that guy's death."

Oddly, this is the second time she had mentioned her own culpability. Is 
she suggesting that she does feel responsible, even though common sense 
must assure her that she is not?

"Well, if a person dies and that death is related to you - even remotely
 - then you must be dead if it does not affect you. And I am not a 
robot. It made me think: am I sending out the wrong messages?" And 
although clearly troubled by the incident, perhaps only the chirpy, 
effervescent Björk could see the positive side.

"When people send bombs to my house, I am not saying I accept it, but I 
am saying that I can deal with it. England is the most experienced 
country in the world when it comes to coping with letter bombs. I 
couldn't have been in a safer place.

"Now I am on a list, the same one as the Prime Minister, and it means 
that all my mail and all my family's mail is checked. My grandmother in 
Iceland is delighted. She knows that all her Christmas parcels, even the 
fragile ones, will arrive in perfect condition."

Björk Gudmundsdottir was born in Iceland 31 years ago, the daughter of 
hippy parents who provided her with a "soft, cuddly, gorgeous youth; I 
was spoilt rotten". There was not much parental discipline in the home, 
but odd little Björk ("people have always called me weird") compensated 
with her own remarkable store of self-discipline.

Unbidden, she would take the bus to attend extra classes after school 
and always made sure her homework was completed on time. She had deep 
friendships with what she calls the "interesting people - the kids who 
had insect collections or something else that was really 'Wow'".

When she was 11, she became something of a child star in Reykjavik after 
a song she had recorded became a hit. Over the following years, she 
joined a punk group called Spit and Snot, played some existential jazz 
and formed the Sugarcubes with guitarist Thor Eldon - Sindji's father.

Before they achieved the unlikely and put Iceland on the pop map, she 
supported herself and her small son - she has always regarded herself as 
a single mother - by gutting fish in a factory and working in a 
bookshop.

The Sugarcubes made their base in London and when she finally left them 
in 1992 to make her own records, it was clear that the unconventional, 
unpredictable Björk would become a star. Hit songs like It's Oh So 
Quiet, Venus as a Boy and Violently Happy quickly followed.

The roots of her sound - which has been described as so "neophiliac" 
that it is barely music at all (she was once lampooned on Spitting Image 
where she was shown supplying the vocal for a heart monitor machine) - 
were formed in the days when she was forced to listen to Beethoven at 
school and then to Jimi Hendrix at home.

"I agree with Stockhausen, in that old music should only be listened to 
once a year. My friends call me a music fascist, but I don't care. You 
must listen to new music now. In Africa, they used sticks and imitated 
the bird noises around them and made it into a beautiful thing. That is 
courage, true courage. Today, you can use anything; you can use cars and 
fax machines and turn them into magic."

In the past, she has used a slamming toilet door and the white blur of 
radio static in her songs. She flounders for a moment when asked to 
describe her own singing voice before concluding: "Most people just 
remember me for my screaming, but I do sing gently and humorously at 
times. I can be warm and I can be cold. Why not? It's my party."

Which is all very new and exciting, of course, but it would be 
interesting to know at what point she decides that the new becomes old 
and thus consigned to the once-a-year dustbin?

"I dunno if that is such a big issue," she says, scratching her Walnut 
Whips. "There's too much escapism out there. People look at their photo 
albums too much or they think everything is going to be great in 100 
years. They never have the courage to say that right now is a hot 
moment."

I am tempted to say that "right now" is a perfect moment to switch off 
her bloody phone, but perhaps Björk hears a magic melody in its falsetto 
shriek which escapes my ear. Eventually, she does pick it up and 
arranges to meet a friend at a Thai restaurant in the evening.

Then the Lady Di of Iceland, replete with eggs and fruit, squeaks off on 
her trainers to her next appointment. She will look neither forward or 
back but concentrate - as she always does - on the hot now.


Telegram, Björk's new album, is released next Monday