k.d. Article - the diva of doom on how to survive life by Katherine Tulich
Sunday Magazine – Herald Sun Sunday July 2, 2000.
Two years ago k.d. lang was ready to call it quits. Instead, she fell in love, moved to LA and found a new life amid the surf culture. Has the woman who made an artform out of angst found contentment? Not quite, she tells Katherine Tulich. She learned happiness is fleeting - so enjoy it while it lasts.
The bubble machine is on overload, an accordion player struts around the stage and three sexy back-up singers warble in the background. It could be a scene imagined in the head of Ally McBeal. But instead of a ballsy black diva, out from the spotlight emerges one of music’s most intriguing icons, k.d. lang.
Sure, the rich, spine-tingling vocals are unmistakable, but there is something noticeably different about lang – she seems brimming with joy, completely relaxed, playful as she prances from side to side, toying with the audience. A change from past performances when even her lighter moments on stage seemed mannered and slightly self-conscious.
This is lang’s first performance after a two-year self-imposed hiatus. She is performing at a party to celebrate the 10th anniversary of US magazine Entertainment Weekly. The magazine had her as its first "cover girl" back in 1990 when she was still considered an alternative, if somewhat quirky, country singer. She launches into a Patsy Cline standard, a staple in her repertoire since that time, addressing the A-list crowd: "here’s a tribute to those who had the foresight and the balls to put me on the cover way back then".
K.d. lang has graced many a magazine cover since then of course, including the now famous 1993 Vanity Fair cover on which she sat in a barber’s chair to be shaved by a scantily clad Cindy Crawford.
Personally and professionally, lang has always been a maverick. Until now. She has emerged from her career hibernation out and proud to say she wants to finally be considered part of the musical mainstream. Her new album, Invincible Summer, which pays more than a passing homage to the sweet sounds and harmonies of The Mamas and the Papas, shows a k.d. lang who’s refreshed, happily in love, brimming with a new attitude.
Earlier in the week lang was meeting her band for the first time in a rehearsal studio set in an industrial estate in Burbank, Los Angeles. Running through tracks from Invincible Summer, she’s excited at the prospect of getting on stage again. "It was absolutely imperative I take a break", she says. "I had been working for 15 years straight since I was 21 and I was tired and grumpy and jaded. I was even talking of retiring".
But instead lang took much neeeded time out to recharge her batteries, relocating from her farm near Vancouver to LA. She bought a house, bought a car and cultivated for the first time ever a happy relationship.
Dressed comfortably in beachwear linen pants and overshirt that are so crushed they look as if they’ve been slept in ("I hate clothes – it’s the least priority in my life"), lang, at 38, is relishing the Californian lifestyle – cars, sun and surf. "This is home for me now, and I have to say I’m quite addicted to the weather", she pronounces, her smile accentuating ruddy cheeks, bold evidence of her new-found love of the sun.
Her home is in the wooded canyons that frame LA. In her time off, lang took pleasure in what most people consider a chore – renovating a house. "It’s not quite a fixer upper", she says, laughing heartily at the suggestion. "But it’s still quite unpretentious. I was there from 7.30 in the morning to 7.30 at night working with carpenters, plumbers and contractors. It was a time of real physical effort that I found completely invigorating. I gained a real appreciation of everyday life and for the people who take pride in what they do. It really helped me to understand my own place in music better. Being a singer is like being a craftsman. It’s what I do.
"It has taken me a long time to feel comfortable with myself", lang continues. "You have to fall in love with yourself, to accept your shortcomings and celebrate your strong points".
Not only is lang more relaxed on stage, she is also more candid in interviews. She sits back in her chair, her dog Saylor – a tan-coloured lab shepherd that looks more like a dingo – frolics around her and bellies up for affection. "I know what it is like to be totally in love with your animal", she says as she gives Saylor an affectionate rub. "We spend a lot of time together, swimming in the ocean".
Invincible Summer is lang’s paean to life and love in sunny LA. "I wrote a lot of the songs by taking a pencil and paper down to the beach", she says, "I always like to have a theme for the imagery of my lyrics and summer provided a nice palette for the vocabulary of this record. Summer is such a nice metaphor for love because when you are happily in love it always feels like summer".
Her partner is 29-year-old singer/songwriter Aleisha Hailey from pop duo The Murmurs. Lang produced one of the band’s albums, and she and Aleisha have been seconded in domestic bliss for the past four years.
Her sexuality has always been a hot media topic, but these days lang says the heat is off. "The tabloid hunger that people have about lesbians has been well satisfied by Ellen (deGeneres) and Anne (Heche), and then Melissa (Etheridge) announcing David Crosby as the father of her children. They’ve certainly taken the heat off me", she says, laughing. "Now I’m like normal, I’m so tame. It’s like, ‘That k.d. … she is so boring!’".
As one of the first performers to proudly announce her sexuality publicly (she officially came "out" in ’92 in an interview in gay magazine The Advocate), lang was held up as the poster girl for lesbian chic. She agrees times have changed, albeit slowly.
"Evolution is a very slow process, but now there are certainly more out performers and a handful of gay and lesbian characters in TV and film", she says. "Personally, I know I feel different being gay. I don’t have those nerves in an interview when people say, ‘Tell me about being a lesbian’ that I used to have".
Lang has always challenged the status quo. When she emerged in the ‘80s as a serious contender for the Patsy Cline throne, she threw the conservative Nashville fraternity on its ear, with her spiky hair and campy outfits with plastic farm animals stuck on. Even when Roy Orbison recorded a powerful duet of Crying with her, country music stations still largely ignored her. She infuriated them even further when she attacked the cattle country heartland with her militant vegetarian views, filming a commercial with the slogan "Meat Stinks".
But just as they turned their back on her, lang took her signature "torch-and-twang" style to a whole new level and a broader audience with the release in ’92 of Ingénue, the biggest album of her career, with the song that finally broke her into the pop charts, Constant Craving. Her albums since then have seemingly become more eclectic and self-indulgent, including All You Can Eat (’96) and her last release Drag (’97), a torch concept album based on the theme of smoking.
"I always though of my music as a small gourmet restaurant for people with an acquired taste", lang says. "I’ve spent a lot of time making records for myself and if people liked it or not, it didn’t matter".
Now she’s hoping the appealing dance/pop grooves of Invincible Summer will attract the mainstream audience she has been alienating. "This is the first record I feel I’ve made for people to like", lang says. "I think it’s an accessible record because this time I wanted to legitimately connect with people emotionally".
Even as a child, Katherine Dawn Lang admits she was an outsider. She was raised in what she describes as "like the Outback" in the middle of the vast Canadian prairies of Alberta, in the small town of Consort, 354km from the nearest big city of Calgary. She was the youngest of four children born to the town pharmacist and his schoolteacher wife whose small house was situated right on the edge of town.
One of her favourite memories was the dirt bike her father gave her when she was nine. "I spent every summer on the road with my dog on the gas tank", she recalls. "The sun doesn’t go down till about 11pm in summer in northern Canada, so I would stay out as late as I could".
Family life may have seemed idyllic for Katherine Dawn, but nothing prepared her for the devastation she felt when her father packed his bags and left the family when she was 12. "I was very close to him so I went into shock when he left", she says.
Her father didn’t just leave, he completely disappeared and lang didn’t hear from him for eight years. "It was very hard to watch my mother go through it", she says. "He left everything, so my mother would teach in the day then go down and try to run the store. I had to take on some of the responsibilities, whether it was working in the drugstore or getting home on time so my mother wouldn’t worry. I went from being a kid to being an adult very fast".
Her mother still lives in Consort in the same house lang grew up in. "One of the things I got to do in my time off was drive up to see my mum and spend time there. I was lying in the bed that I slept in as a kid, seeing a lot of the people I went to school with who are now married to each other. It made me yearn for a simple life, but on the other hand I also realised how fortunate I am that I have a life where I can eat Chinese food in Hong Kong, have a beer in Germany or go boating in Australia.
"Sometimes when you are working too hard all you think about is, ‘Oh no, not another f---ing plane’. Going home gave me a chance to appreciate what I do and what I’ve accomplished".
But lang admits her childhood experiences have still jaded her views on love and permanency, and her comments are surprising from someone in the blissful throes of being in love. "I don’t expect love", she says. "I think you are blessed with a good relationship. It’s a gift you can’t take for granted or mould. But I don’t expect this beautiful point in my life to last forever. Life has its ebbs and flows and I’m just basking in the beauty of it right now. It has been four wonderful years with Aleisha. I hope it lasts forever, but I know it could end tomorrow. You just have to appreciate what you have for as long as you have it, ‘cause happiness can end".
Ingénue was so potent in emotion because it spoke of love that was unattainable, an unrequited crush she had for a married woman in the past. Lang often confessed to the old adage that she needed to suffer to create great art. "And, look – I managed to make a good record happy which is hard", she says, beaming proudly. "It wasn’t any harder than Ingénue in the sense they both came from a very honest place, but I thought it would be difficult. It’s hard to express extreme happiness without being extremely corny".
Lang wants Invincible Summer to be her biggest album yet, and admits she will be upset if it is not embraced. "This record was a big breakthrough for me personally and I would love more than anything for it to be accepted because that would just validate everything for me", she says. "But I also realise in this business you have to be prepared to punch in your maturity card and accept what happens".
I didn't get to have my picture taken with her because she was really rushed. Even so, she was very gracious and friendly. She joked around with us and was throwing a football back and forth with us. There were a few other fans there, but not many. She was asking everyone their predictions for the Super Bowl (she's a Ravens fan). Being sports-impaired, I simply stared into space during that part. She hung around behind the stage or on the side steps most of the day and we could see her on her cell phone a LOT! Every few minutes, she would make another call. We didn't see Leisha anywhere and there was no mention of a breakup. One thing though...she seemed very happy and I don't remember seeing her smile as much at the last show as she was today. Her grin literally never left her face. As it turned out, k.d. had laryngitis (although you'd never know by her voice). We had a good look at the set list before the show and by the time she hit the stage, she'd made some changes. She was supposed to do "Mind of Love" and substituted "World of Love". She dropped "Crying" altogether. I think it would have been too much on her pipes. She did everything from IS except "Curiosity", "Simple" and "Only Love". She did "Miss Chat" (without the strap-on comment) and "Constant Craving" which she let the audience sing most of it for her. At the concert itself, she was more animated than I've seen her in years, doing her Elvis bit to the hilt. She danced, surfed, boogied, strutted and swaggered. There was even some tongue action! She was VERY flirtatious. She had on tons of beads from the Gaspirilla celebration and threw a few strands out to the audience (I got a purple strand! 