Times  2001-08-18

By Paul Connolly


"Bjork: The Times interview, 2001"


Björk is not weird. She is not a white witch, an elfin eccentric or a 
pretentious pixie. She's certainly not, as some sections of the media 
would have it, barking mad. What she is though, is a bright, driven, 
hugely talented musician and singer.

"I've been labelled as this mad eccentric and it doesn't mean anything 
to me," she says, almost impossibly pretty at 35, fiddling with her 
shoulder-length raven hair in a West London hotel bar. "I don't 
understand it," she continues. "Everyone's a little bit mad in their own 
way but some people fixate on this with me as if it's the only way they 
can explain me away."

Some observers have also suggested that Björk is not made for the world 
of pop - that she's too delicate, too shy. She's certainly no rent-a-
quote Noel Gallagher or media-hungry Madonna. But to suggest that this 
multi-million selling artist, a woman who has made consistently ground-
breaking pop music, been a fashion inspiration across continents, won a 
Palme D'Or for her performance in film Dancer In The Dark, and worked 
with some of the most interesting musicians and artists of our times, is 
somehow too fragile, is just plain patronising.

Björk has, however, found celebrity wearing. She has struggled over the 
past five years to find a level of fame that she's comfortable with. 
There were two well-publicised incidents in 1996 that left her desperate 
to escape from the maelstrom. First there was the Ricardo Lopez, an 
American fan, whose apartment was plastered with pictures of Björk and 
who took umbrage at her relationship with drum 'n' bass pioneer Goldie 
because he was black. In his anger he videoed himself mailing Björk a 
bomb and then blew his head off. Then there was the episode at Bangkok 
airport when Julie Kaufman, a television journalist, started to harass 
her for an interview. When Björk refused, saying that they could do an 
interview the next day, Kaufman began to talk to Sindri, her son.

"She started interviewing him live on air," Björk says, "and being 
really rude to him, and that's when I flipped. So I was just ready to go 
back inside my cocoon and make music, because that's why I wanted to."

And not let's forget the Spanish stalker who had been trailing her for 
over four years, sending her threatening messages and even breaking into 
her mother's house. Given these circumstances, retreating from celebrity 
doesn't seem so much evidence of being "weak" than of being entirely 
sensible.

So she left her base in London (though she still owns a house in Maida 
Vale, West London), intending to return to her native Iceland for good. 

"I was going to be in Iceland forever. I'd had it with travelling. But 
once I'd been there for nearly a year I was going..." she whistles in a 
bored, eyes flitting around way. 

"Because at the end of the day I was born there, and it's sort of a 
village which is the best thing about it, but also the not-so-best."

So she spent some time in Denmark and Spain before moving to New York. 
Was it because of love? Björk looks at me and bristles slightly. 
Although she's a charming, talkative, opinionated interviewee, Björk is 
obsessive about keeping her private life, well, private. Even though I'd 
heard from friends in New York that her relationship with Matthew 
Barney, an enfant terrible of the American art scene, was relatively 
common knowledge, she's damned if she's going to talk about it. "I moved 
to New York," she says finally, "because I can walk around 
unrecognised."

And when I ask after Sindri, her 15-year-old son, who recently went back 
to Iceland to live with his father, Thór, after spending a good portion 
of his life with his mother, Björk doesn't so much bristle, as well-up 
with tears briefly. She looks away and her voice cracks ever so 
slightly. "I see him every month, but it's different when it's full-
time. I try not to talk about him." Although Björk has accepted that her 
ex-husband (who she still sees regularly) had a right to spend some time 
with Sindri it's apparent she misses her son hugely.

Björk's upbringing has been somewhat mythologised. Her parents, Hildur 
Run Hauksdóttir (a housewife and sometime martial arts instructor) and 
Guomunder Gunnarson, a trade union leader, divorced when she was two. 
She moved with her mother into a flat in Reykjavik.

"I wouldn't call it a hippy commune; I think that's to exaggerate (sic). 
It was just a place where eight people rented rooms of the same flat. I 
was the only child there, and they all had long hair, which doesn't make 
it into a commune. But they all ate healthy food and listened to Jimi 
Hendrix. The pleasures of that generation, I guess. I could also stay up 
as long as I wanted."

Were you spoilt rotten? Björk smiles. "I think you could put it that 
way. If I thought I had something to say, people would listen to me. And 
people would play me records that they were listening to, and explain 
them to me. It was very good for a kid to be brought up in that sort of 
atmosphere."

What was the first band that you really took to heart? A glorious grin 
breaks over Björk's beautiful face. "I was obsessed with Sparks which 
threw everyone. I think for them that was too pop. My stepfather (Saevar 
Arnason) who I lived with from the age of four to 14, he was a 
guitarist; he was quite grand, and played in bands in Iceland, and was 
really good. So I was brought up listening to a lot of guitar music, 
like Eric Clapton, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, all that stuff. 
That was the norm in my house. So that fact that he and my mother hated 
Sparks made me like them more."

This contrariness, along with her liberal upbringing, seems to lie at 
the core of what Björk has become. She started her first band at 12 
(she'd enjoyed huge success the year before with an album of Icelandic 
standards) and by 14 had left home. "Nobody thought it strange - I was 
ready," she shrugs.

Before long Björk was part of the Kukl collective, a disparate group of 
Icelandic creative types who played angular rock/jazz. It was also when 
she discovered her love of collaborating. "Maybe it was the age - that 
age when you meet for the first time in your life like-minded people and 
it becomes the blueprint for all of you; for what you're going to be for 
the rest of your life."

Next came The Sugarcubes in 1984. "We were just supposed to have been a 
joke party band - we could just as easily have been called The Lollipops
 - but one gig became two and suddenly Birthday happened."

Birthday was, of course, most people's introduction to that swooping, 
almost unearthly voice, pregnant with drama and tenderness. When I tell 
her that she's the only singer I've heard whose voice sounds better live 
than on record she almost blushes. "Thank you," she murmurs, almost 
waving me on to the next question.

After three albums, the Sugarcubes split. And not for any of the usual 
reasons. Half of the band wanted to return to writing, while Björk had 
decided she'd better get on with her own life. She had married Thor, the 
drummer of the Sugarcubes, when she was 18, and had Sindri two years 
later, but the marriage had soon foundered.

Moving to England was, Björk felt, necessary if she was to develop 
creatively.

"I really wanted to collaborate with people who were as passionate about 
music as I was. I'm a freak. I could talk about, and listen to music, 
and make music 24 hours. I'd be very happy to go without the rest. I had 
to come to England, otherwise I'd just have sat dreaming in my 
comfortable armchair."

There's no great need to discuss the phenomenal success of Björk's solo 
career. Debut (1993) made with Nellee Hooper, the Soul II Soul supremo, 
was a huge hit, selling over four million copies worldwide, while Post 
(1995) was even better, featuring as it did, Hyperballad and It's Oh So 
Quiet, the latter a huge single hit. Björk has no idea why she hit such 
a chord. "I'm the worst person to ask," she laughs. "I have no idea."

After the nearly impenetrable Homogenic (1997) Lars Von Trier asked her 
to star in his film Dancer in The Dark. Their acrimonious relationship 
still bugs Björk. "If he asked me to try something I'd say, 'Ok, let me 
think about it.' But if I suggested something he'd just say, 'No, no 
way.'"

For an avowed believer in collaboration this was a kick in the teeth.

"I always believed that if you worked with someone you'd bring qualities 
to a project that they didn't have, and vice-versa. But not with Lars."

Björk's new album Vespertine may be a reaction to Von Trier's alleged 
despotism. The American electronic act Matmos offer a supporting role, 
but this is Björk's album. It's also the kind of record that the oldest-
swinger-in-town, Madonna, could never make. Where Madge surfs the 
Zeitgeist picking up on people as they become the artiste du jour, Björk 
has always forced the agenda. Björk's patronage of the techno duo Black 
Dog is well known but her use of Alec Empire, Atari Teenage Riot's 
linchpin, on Bachelorette (1997) is less-heralded. Likewise her 
collaboration - there's that word again - with Chris Cunningham, the 
mighty film-maker, on the video All Is Full Of Love.

But Vespertine is throroughly Björk. It's a gorgeously romantic record 
about home and love and her use of female choirs is simply inspired. "In 
the beginning I thought it was ridiculous, and that's why it was 
exciting, sort of impossible." She pauses and smiles broadly. "The most 
exciting place on the planet is actually your kitchen; you can sit there 
and you don't feel you're missing out. It became sort of a joke with 
myself to be honest. But at the same time I was sincere about it; I 
really do think at that stage with the album, that was the most 
challenging thing I could have done, to create that sort of paradise in 
the home."

Despite the difficulties she's faced, it would seem that Björk has at 
last found some peace in love and domesticity. And what could be less 
weird than that?