Army of She by Evelyn McDonnell

Author:Evelyn McDonnell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780679647003
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2009-01-14T00:00:00+00:00

EPISODE 6

In which our heroine discovers there’s no place like home, and the narrator discovers our heroine

Björk did not strike me as an elf.

We met at my hotel in Reykjavík. She showed up quite late. The hotel staff was excited she was going to be there, and reassuring while the photographer, Cherry Kim, and I waited—as if feeling protective of their slightly naughty national treasure. A tardy celebrity was scarcely something new to us, but we were a little worried, as our time with Björk was limited. She arrived, finally, not really apologizing—what’s the point?—but ready to do business.

Her Björkness and I headed off alone to a nearby coffee shop, Caffe Mokka, for an hour of interview. She was very serious, leaning carefully into the mike to make herself heard over the cappuccino machine, to ensure her words would not be missed or misunderstood. Her unusual accent certainly contributes to her quirky rep: she has the occasional non-native English speaker’s odd choice of words, she rolls her Rs deliciously, and her speech, like her music, has a cadence all its Icelandic own. But I did not feel like I was speaking to a child. Actually, although I’m one year older than Björk, I felt intimidated, like I was conversing with someone far more worldly and experienced than myself, in a way that not every rock star impresses me. This was not the “elfin woman-child” I expected to meet.

Male music journalists often impugn the objectivity of their female peers; they think we fall for every Lothario with a cucumber in his pants whom we get the chance to meet. But it’s my belief that it’s the boys that slip in their drool more often. After all, they don’t get to interview members of the opposite sex regularly; “women in rock” is a recent and fleeting fad, and female artists traditionally get short shrift in the rock press (see the anthology I edited with Ann Powers, Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop, and Rap, for more on this subject). Many men, certainly the differently socialized ones who tend to become rock critics, can’t talk to a pretty girl without visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads. In proportion to our numbers in the field, I can think of more male critics who have famously bedded, wedded, or tried to bed and wed female stars than I can vice versa (Cameron Crowe and Nancy Wilson, Legs McNeil and Sinéad O’Connor, Bart Bull and Michelle Shocked).

Every interview is a seduction, or a standoff. Most stick to intellectual tangos. In general—and I’m obviously making generalizations here that vary for every person and situation—there’s a different dynamic when it’s a woman interviewing a woman. We draw different quotes and behavior, and receive different impressions. After reading a drove of past articles about the Pretenders, I once walked into a hotel suite to interview Chrissie Hynde, expecting her to kick my ass, but instead we drank tea and giggled.

As Björk once told Rolling Stone, her

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