Sarah McLachlan

A few words from Sarah. Starting out:

I started playing ukelele when I was four years old. Pretty much because I was in love with Joan Baez. My mother was really into folk music and that was the kind of stuff she was playing and so that's what I was introduced to. Stuff like Joan Baez, Cat Stevens, Simon and Garfunkle - a lot of old, traditional folk music and I fell in love with it. So I got a ukelele and started taking ukelele lessons and then moved on to acoustic guitar when I was big enough to hold on to one. I always loved music, I took lots of lessons. I took piano lessons and voice lessons as I got older as well. More than anything it was to learn how to play the instrument, though. The only thing that was available to be taught at the time was classical music and I enjoyed it to a certain extent but it certainly wasn't my passion.

When I was seventeen I joined a band called The October Game in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I'm from. It was a Sunday a week thing, I was allowed to go out and rehearse with these guys and we had three gigs in the history of our existence and the first gig was opening up for a Vancouver based band called Mauve, and essentially Nettwerk Records started to support this band, and the guy who was the guitar player at the time heard me sing, wanted me to join his band. My mother and father had a fit because I was barely getting through high school and they wanted me to finish high school and go to university and get a normal job. Music was a fun hobby and a nice diversion but not something to be taken seriously like that. Of course it was my dream so I was so angry that they wouldn't let me go, but in retrospect it was a really good thing because I continued on ... the band sort of fell apart. Everybody was going to university, we didn't have any money or any time to stick together. But, I continued making music and they approached me two years later, Network Records, and offered me a five record deal based really on that one show when they heard me sing. And I said to them I've never really written a complete song in my life are you sure you want to do this, and they said well yes - just come out to Vancouver, we'll give you an eight-track and just see what happens. I was really, really lucky. I was in the right place at the right time and I got this handed to me on a silver platter, and obviously I had to have enough talent to sustain and keep it going, but I was incredibly lucky.

Basically, when I had the record contract offered to me, I'd always found great joy and solace in music and I was perfectly happy doing other people's music. At the same time I'd always been writing little bits of things but I'd never really had the discipline to sit down and write a whole song. I'd never felt there'd been any reason for it, and the contract was - OK, you're supposed to write a record - I guess I'd better get to work. And I really had no clue what I was doing it was just trial and error. I'd been rehearsing for this my whole life and at nineteen I didn't have any fear. I don't remember having any fear, anyway, it was just terribly exciting. The thrill of my life. My dream come true, and so I just threw myself into it. Granted I had a lot of fun hanging around Vancouver and exploring and I didn't work as hard as I probably should have, but that was mainly because I was following my instinct and I felt I had to let these things come out naturally, and its the same way I've always worked and it's ended up usually taking me a year and a half to make a record.

I think one of the main reasons it takes so long for me to write a song or finish it is because a lot of it is very theraputic and cathartic. A lot of it is me sorting through my own stuff, working through issues and trying to do it in a creative and artistic form, too, and not just 'here's my journal entry of Wednesday 1997'. It's trying to make it interesting and trying to give it levels and it is difficult because you're mining your soul, basically. It sounds corny but you're trying to come up with answers and I think music for me has been such a great form of expression, of personal expression and of finding truths, whether it's about myself or other issues. So it's very personal. It's brought up a lot of harsh things that I haven't necessarily, wanted to face. It's like going and talking to a therapist, which helps a lot, too.

The rise of women in music: Well, I think it's a ground/roots revolution. I think there's been a lot of amazing women writing great songs for years and years. I think there's been a lot of things. The state of radio has really evolved and grown over the last five or six years. There are a lot of new formats that have opened up which have allowed a lot of female artists who have, in the past, fallen through the cracks. It's given them a place in music, which of course creates more genres, and more pigeonholeing, really. It's like 'you fit on AAA' or 'you fit on modern rock' or 'you fit on A3', I can't keep up with all the different formats. It is still ... they have a narrow attitude towards music, but it has gotten better. I think some people say it's a reaction to the grunge movement where it was very male dominated, very hard, very angry music. Here I am pigeonholeing myself, essentially, by saying we're a reaction to that. But I think it's a lot broader than that but I think one of the reasons it's taken such a strong hold is that things always move to the left .. to the right, and I think that people want something different and want something that appeals to their senses and appeals to their souls and can draw something out from them. And I think that a lot of the.. certainly the music that I do is therapeutic and a lot of the music that I love and respect does the same thing - it draws you into yourself and it challenges you in some way. It's not just fluff.

One of the really positive elements of all these new formats is that they've opened up a huge window for women artists. I guess five or six years ago when I started taking singles to radio they would say we can't add this, we added Tori this week, or something, which is completeley ridiculous. OK, so you're saying our music sounds alike, or what? No, you're two women, we can't play two women back to back. It was incredibly insulting and incredibly sexist. But it came out of their mouth like there was nothing wrong with this. People had gotten trained and into this position in radio where these old-school attitudes prevail and they didn't realise how sexist and how antiquated they were. So, we were all fighting that and the whole ridiculous thing about, when we tried to put this festival together, how so many people said that you can't put two women on the same bill, you'd be crazy to put a whole bunch of women on the same bill, no-one would believe that it could be done, and of course I'm really up for any challenge like that. If you're going to tell me I can't do it I'm going to force it through even more. It just seems ridiculous.

On Lilith Fair:

In all the hype of it I sort of forgot where it really started from. I was supposed to be writing my next record, I was supposed to be writing Surfacing, I had quite a block and my manager suggested why don't you do a few shows in the summer just to get your creative juices flowing and I said OK if I'm going to do some shows I want it to be fun, I don't want the shows to be all on my shoulders so how about we get a bunch of women artists to come an play some shows. And we did four and they were wildly successful and so we thought next summer why don't we do the whole summer and thus Lilith was born and it came more from the idea of us having some fun. Let's create a platform where I can actually sit and chat with somebody who I have great respect for as opposed to seeing them at award shows and being able maybe to say hi to them. It's just so great to get to meet these people, to meet your peers, to get to know them, to get to sing with them, there's been tons of that, which is just brilliant. Emmy Lou Harris would sing Angel with me every night, one of the songs on my record, which was a huge thrill for me, and Paula Cole sings with me every night. There's so much jamming and playing with everyone, my husband's a drummer and of course he was in everybody's band - such a tramp.

Do the promoters who didn't back Lilith now wish they had?

It's hard for me to know because I get it filtered down to me through my management. No-one said to me you can't do it - of course they go oh, that's a really nice idea - then they go to my manager and say what? is she crazy? you can't do that. Most of the opposition came from promoters that we didn't have a prior relationship with. I've been touring in this country for ten years and gotten some really great relationships built up with people, so for the most part that was an easy sell. It was just the people in the markets that we didn't know. Certainly there were grumblings in the higher echelons of the music world saying are you crazy, you're gonna get killed out there, because summer festivals were having a really hard time.

I can speak only on my own behalf, but I can't play in front of 20,000 people on my own, but together we can and we are all getting new audiences this way. Whether it's from the main stage acts or the folks who are playing on the B stage. We're all broadening our audience by doing this which I think is really positive, because every night you'll have a hip-hop artist, you'll have a folk artist, you'll have a pop artist, you'll have R'n'b, you'll have all sorts of different stuff. But the cool thing is that the audiences they listen to everything and they are respectful of everything which is really nice. It's not completely and utterly obvious that they've come to see one person. They come early. Everybody shows up early and they spend the whole day and go to all the stages. I have so many different influences from so many walks of life and different kinds of music that I hate to get called folk-pop or pop, or whatever. So, yes, I write popular music - I do now because it's getting played on the radio, but for a long time I was 'alternative' because I didn't fit into any nice little genre, and I'd rather not, I'd rather keep surprising people and keep doing something different, keep taking the music to different levels and different places.