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PICK OF THE POPS
(June 1997)

Jewel

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Reviews . Record releases . Quick lowdown . UK Tour Info . Pieces of Jewel 

NEW INFO: These pages will continue on my site, as they seem to create a bit of interest, I'll be adding bits, but what I shall do is to concentrate on Jewel's presence in the UK, rather than the whole-goddam-world! That way, it might be manageable, and also Jewel is being done to death on other web-sites, far more informative than my own, but very little is known in the UK, and even less is published.

TOUR INFO

16th October 1997. Went to see Jewel in Birmingham last night. Quite simply tremendous concert. I've just got to gush about this one. After playing several new songs, and one or two old ones. She had the crowd in stiches at points with her witty banter and anti-heckling put-down one-liners. I'm not that good at concert reviews, but I'd definitely recommend anybody to go and see her if they possibly can. Quite simply brilliant!

UK RECORD RELEASES

16th October 1997 - Seems to be a resurgance of promotion for Jewel's album in the UK. A front inside cover dedicated to Pieces of You features in this weeks NME featuring a quite nice piccie and a couple of reviews of the album.

21st July 1997 - Jewel releases new single in UK! Jewel's second single has been released in the UK. "You Were Made for Me" has been released, and I will be giving further details on it as soon as I can get my mits on a copy!

27th July 1987 - Hmmm Still no sign of this record in any of the local stores, is this a hoax put about by the NME?

QUICK LOWDOWN ON JEWEL

This month's PICK OF THE POPS is a young lady called Jewel, who's excellent first LP "Pieces of You" has been wow-ing the States now for quite some time, but is only now getting any recognition over here in the good ol' UK. I first encountered her music from being on the Heather Nova mailling list, and bought the album (damn cheaply too!) soon after. Since then, I've been waiting patiently for further music from her. I managed to get to a gig in London recently of hers, and was mightily impressed.

Particular favorites of mine of her music are "Who Will Save Your Soul", and was overjoyed to hear that it was coming out on single. Mind you, considering, according to the text below, it was supposed to be out on June 2nd, I still haven't managed to find it! Never mind.

Recommended listening, if you already know Jewel, are probably my other featured artists, Beth Orton and Heather Nova.

However, to those of you who've never heard (of) Jewel, give her a try, that LP is a bit expensive, but I'm sure you'll agree, once you've heard it, well worth the risk.

JEWEL IN THE NEWS

The following are articles and interviews of Jewel that have appeared in the UK Press over the past few months. If you know of any others, please eMail me at jbromley@enterprise. net

Quick access:

Q Magazine | Mojo | Melody Maker | NME (2)

Extracts from an interview in the New Musical Express.

Tomorrow she is due at the Mayor's office to be presented the keys to the city, an award slightly less prestigious than being granted a year's free parking tokens. But from the no-bullshit glint in her eyes she may well be planning to piss on this particular parade.

"I don't really like very much about Anchorage to be honest with you." she grins through the crooked lower teeth that have graced every magazine cover from Rolling Stone to Which Crooked Lower Teeth?.

A girl who now lives in relative luxury in San Diego and finds walking down the street more of a chore than slaving over a hot udder for hours on end.

[...] and has become the biggest Stateside phenomenom since crap beer. All without you ever having heard of her.

Jewel grimaces at your correspondent as if he'd just served up her pet terrapin in a quiche.

Alanis may have the warble, Liz Phair may have the balls (Errr... - Biology Ed), Tori Amos may have the nutter factor and Joan Osborne may have the um, interesting hair, but Jewel has the vulnerabilty, backed with a melodic clout that could stop an encroaching Chinese Army in its tracks.

Haven't you even got any stories about vomiting on Bob Dylan, or something? "Y'know, I cannot vomit," Jewel laughs. "It's very hard for me to vomit even when I'm really sick. I've never had a talent for it."

New Musical Express, 2nd August 1997.

"Fuck You !" Jewel Kilcher, 23, native of Homer, Alaska, seller of four million copies of her album Pieces Of You, is flipping a cheery V-Sign to the punter who has asked, before she's played a note, whether her breasts are real. His 40 fellow Glaswegians, mostly record shop owners, bussed in at record company expense in the hope they'll plug Jewel a tad more keenly, chuckle along. Here, at Maxaluna, on Sauchiehall Street, with a backdrop of Peter Wyngarde, she takes her guitar off her back, unzips its bag and plays half an hour of songs interspersed with yodels and anecdotes about meeting Bob Dylan. Not one bold Scotsperson dare go within 10 feet of her. As she finishes (no encores), to complete the package, Jewel places the guitar back in its case, zips it up, puts it on her back, marches off to a waiting Rolls Royce and shoots back to her Hilton Hotel, with Nedra Carroll, her "mom" and chaperone in tow.

"It's not hard to come to Europe where nobody knows me," she coos. "People ask how I go from playing big halls and being famous to places where they treat you like shit. Neither seems real or very different".

Yule Kilcher, Jewel's paternal grandfather, emigrated from Switzerland to Alaska in time to help draft the state charter. His son, Atz, married Nedra and the pair made albums as a folk duo. Jewel and her two brothers were raised as Mormons on a homestead with no running water or television. When Jewel was 8, her parents divorced. She found herself with Atz, who liked a drink. Soon, it was off to "mom" in Anchorage. After Jewel secured a "vocal scholarship" at Interlochen Fine Arts Academy, Michigan, Nedra re-located to San Diego. Jewel joined her, living in a VW van. Nedra, one of life's chaperones, lived in the van next door.

"It was horrifying, " Jewel clucks. "I was young, my hands were small. I didn't have an understanding of how to make an impact on my world, how to get beyond waitressing in coffee shops. "

Broke and low on self-esteem ("I never thought I was a good songwriter, or even that I was a songwriter. I was never that self-assuming of myself"), whatever a vocal scholarship was, it was time to put it to good use. Soon Jewel was singing her heart out at the Innerchange coffee house.

"I was tired of surviving, putting all my time, my creativity into worrying about rent. It's a shitty, degrading thing to waste yourself on. "

She took hold of her own life.

"I've spent a lot of my life being very confused and very lonely and separated from any belief I could live a life that was worth living, "she whispers. "I see how many people do that and it gets to me, it always has. The situations I was put in, instead of hardening me and making me cynical, gave me greater compassion. Take suicide - it's not caused by one thing, it's an accumulation of little cruelties we inflict on each other, so we go through life hoping nothing happens to us. Not many people feel like taking control, which is unfortunate. I care a lot about that and that's what got me out of the situation I was in. "

This meant a slacker life.

"I sang one night a week and spent the rest doing what I wanted, "she smiles. "Surfing. Writing a lot. I love scientific literature, studying the effects of voice on the human body. That's where I found my freedom. "

In 1994, she signed to Atlantic Records and Pieces Of You was mostly recorded In Neil Young's Broken Arrow studio in Woodside, California.

"I wanted the album to be a time capsule, to represent me honestly. I'm not embarrassed by its openness. It has courage and integrity. I though it would only sell 30,000, so it wasn't like I was taking a big risk, like I was going to be this open in front of millions of people. When I wrote it, I was a teenager, struggling with how to live in the world without involving myself in extremes. How to be spiritual and not have to be a hippie or some new ager. We're at a time where we're learning spiritually, without having to live on mountain-top communes.

"When I was 18, life was unbearable, so it made me ask, What do I enjoy doing? Are dreams hobbies? Is 'dream' too cliche ? Can I believe in dreams? It made sense to move from 'I feel fucked up' to 'What are we going to do about it ?'

"Several things could have filled my void, but I was just a little better at songwriting than marble carving. Selling four million albums three years later is like a beat-up car winning the Indy 500. It wasn't built for this. It's competing with things that are slick, really cool and high- tech. This is just girl and guitar. I didn't think it was possible, to tell you the truth. "

Virtually chorus-free, the Tori Amos - like Pieces Of You was received badly.

"As I predicted, nothing happened, " she remembers. "The radio stations said it was unlistenable and over their dead bodies would they play it. It was fine for me - I didn't think I'd exist within what was popular. "

Atlantic smartly sent the cheap-to-maintain Jewel and her trusty guitar across America. She headlined coffee houses and supported anyone:Pete Murphy, Jeff Buckley, The Ramones, even The Beach Boys. She secured herself a cult following and 14 months after its release, Pieces Of You began to take off. Now, it's been 70 weeks in the American chart and - hooray - she's a star. It's said she's a great beauty of the age.

"It's funny how many of us feel moral depravity, don't you think ?" she muses. "Through osmosisis, I got a big dose of, like, moral depravity. I've struggled with that, but I try not to play on my sexuality. I love words and turns of phrase-to me, that's sexy. It's easy to believe others are beautiful and much harder to believe you are. I don't know many women who look in the mirror and think they're beautiful. They think, Oh I was beautiful in that picture but I must be an ugly cow today. But at the same time, you are aware of yourself. "

It's a curse then ?

"Yes, but it's hard in my position, "she whines. "I can't care about people perceiving me, I can't exist like that. I can't create when I worry about people thinking I'm just a pretty face. I have driven myself nuts. It's tremendous, the burden. "

Wisely, the first things she did as a star were,

a) wear a see-through dress at this year's Grammies ( "It was such a big deal," she puzzles, all Phoebe from Friends. "Like, you can't be spiritual and sexy?"), and

b) cop-off with high-profile actor Sean Penn.

"It's so insignificant to my music," she snaps (though Penn directs the video to current single, You Were Meant For Me), "that, I kind of, like don't want to talk about it. I find it so silly. I don't have much patience for it. It's disappointing that people continue to focus on it, to talk about it. "

She will not, we may assume, be covering any Madonna songs in the near future.

'Q' magazine, August 1997

The stars divulge what's guaranteed to get them going as they invite MOJO. . . ALL BACK TO MY PLACE

Jewel
Multi-platinum yodellist

What music are you currently grooving to?

The new Pavement. I have Let It Be by The Replacements with me, and I'm really into Yma Sumac right now.

What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album?

The first Rickie Lee Jones album. It really has a great groove that so few albums catch with studio musicians. I love that sound; it just feels so right.

What was the first record you bought, and where did you buy it?

Pink Floyd, thinking it was The Pink Panther - I didn't read well when I was about four or five. I listened to every single song on The Wall thinking it was The Pink Panther singing it, which is very sick, haha, strutting around. . . I bought it in a supermarket in Anchorage in Alaska where I grew up.

Which musician (other than yourself) have you ever wanted to be?

Boy, a million of them. Didn't work, though. I really loved Nina Simone but over everybody, Ella Fitzgerald - not so much her life, but definitely her voice.

What do you sing in the shower?

Opera music. I love Puccini. And a lot of baroque stuff - I love Monteverdi. And Aaron Copland lullabies, like All The Blue Horses, are very pretty.

What is your favourite Saturday night record?

Something very quiet. Last Saturday at the Blue Shamrock in Ireland I heard some beautiful traditional guitar and penny flute.

And your favourite Sunday morning record?

Cello concertos - Elgar's played by Jacqueline Du Pre is beautiful. And Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. And Pleased To Meet Me by The Replacements is great on both Saturday nights and Sunday mornings. Leo Kottke I like too. I love his voice; it's very comical. He's really coming into his own; his writing too.

Mojo, July 1997.

JEWEL 'Friends' friendly folk

SO WHO IS SHE?

Alaskan-born of Swiss parents, the effortlessly poised Jewel Kilcher took her guitar and folky, poetic songs to California, where she sang her way into the hearts of coffee-house audiences. And, soon enough, the somewhat harder hearts of A&R types.

WHY SHELL OUT ON HER?

Do anything but buy it and you'll miss the liner notes' extra poems, and album credits proclaiming industry heavyweight Danny Goldberg "the most soulful daddy-o in the business". "I approach the business by always trying to call out of someone the highest in themselves. It's just a matter of engaging people in a good way instead of a bad way", opines Jewel, sunnily.

SO WHAT'S SO DIFFERENT THEN?

Michelle Shocked with a clothing allowance, if you're a cynic. Radiant, clear-eyed optimism, "Friends"-friendly looks and an effortless vocal range, if you're not. "I find people fascinating, " Jewel exclaims unblushingly. "I love people. I like us. I think it's fascinating to see businessmen walking like cripples in their business suits, old women that giggle with their long grey hair. I love every F***ed up and beautiful thing about us. "

BEST ENJOYED. . . ?

Whenever you're wondering "Who Will Save Your Soul?" (the latest in Jewel's impressive string of US hits.) That's only on a metaphorical level: "I don't have any particular religion. But yeah, I think that spirit is the heart and soul of every action. I've never had my soul saved; I think our souls are already saved. "

Jennifer Nine, Melody Maker, 14 June 1997.

"I don’t think cynicism’s smarter, it’s just safer, " declares a characteristically defiant Jewel, on the subject of the raw, heartfelt songs that grace her debut LP, "Pieces of You". And she can afford to be smug.

Two of those songs, the uplifting "Who Will Save Your Soul?" and the tender "You Were Made For Me" have recently shot their way into the US Top Ten. She’s currently on the cover of Rolling Stone. She’s been feted by the likes of Neil Young and Bob Dylan (who let her tweak his nose!), and even Smokin’ Bill Clinton has had her around for a bit of a campfire singalong at one of his inaugural balls. Things are clearly on the up for the 23-year-old singer-songwriter, who was, not so long ago, eking a demoralizing living waiting tables in San Diego and living on carrots and peanut butter in the back of her van. Is the smell of success sweet?

"Even half-an-hour of a bad show is better than three hours of waitressing, " she grimaces. "But yeah, it’s fun to see all the people kiss my butt that said my records would be played on the radio over their dead bodies. "

The downright folky "Who Will Save Your Soul?" was, frankly, never going to be an obvious candidate for the higher reaches of chartdom. With its contrified, rootsical melodies, and its heartfelt plea for more substance in life, it recalls nothing so much as a post slacker "Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution" by Tracey Chapman (ask your elder sister. . . )

But after two and a half years of hard touring - consisting of "opening up for punk and goth bands and playing tiny clubs and hating life, doing 40 cities in 30 days and driving myself everywhere in a rental car" - Jewel’s reward has come in the shape of four million album sales, and a devoted fanbase coast to coast. For someone whose most dearly held personal value is sincerity and who was brought up a free spirit in rural Alaska, how does she feel about her new-found media-babe mega-fame?

"I’m not real comfortable with it, " she sighs, with the pained air of a lo-fi shrinking violet. "But a friend of mine who is a movie actor said it was an adjustment well worth making. "

Ah. That’ll be Sean Penn, with whom Jewel has had a much publicised affair.

But enough scurrilous tongue-wagging; what about the none-less-rock poems that litter the album sleeve? (One is called "Las Vegas", and it’s great: "Women who suck - Their cigarettes - As though they were - Giving their - Hatred head. ") Why are these tacked on as an afterthought?

A torrent of sincerity wells up: "It was more out of humility than an afterthought. I’ve always been such an accidental writer. I never thought I was a songwriter. I never thought I was a poet. Buckowski’s a poet! Jesus, I’m a kid living in a car! I thought putting out a book of poetry was pretentious!" she laughs, not unreasonably. "But, er, I do plan to collect them all into a book now. "

Like the man said, it’s an adjustment well worth making.

Kitty Empire, NME, 7 June 1997.

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Last updated, July 18, 2000

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