Rickie Lee Jones: I love songs that speak to me
This interview with Rickie Lee Jones was first published in 2012.
Asked what made her wish to record a whole album of cover songs, Rickie Lee Jones quips: "Money".
Joking aside, her selection of the 10 songs to interpret on her fine new album The Devil You Know is innovative and interesting. Tracks by the Rolling Stones, Robbie Robertson and Donovan sit alongside the traditional St James's Infirmary and Theodore Anderson's lovely spiritual, Seems Like A Long Time.
The album developed from the idea of doing songs from movies and musicals. "They were groovy songs but it didn't quite work," says Jones.
Does she care what the songwriters or performers make of her versions? Jones says: "A lot of people who know Mick Jagger have been asking me: 'Has Mick heard this version of Sympathy For The Devil?' But I'm not sure I want that sort of measuring. I guess if he came out and said he thought it was the bees-knees, then it would have some sort of Kudos. But he could say he hated it. Either way, I think it's important not to care - otherwise it corrupts the process."
Jones also covers a rare Van Morrison song from his glorious, and often overlooked, Veedon Fleece album from 1974. Was it a conscious choice to cover lesser-known Van rather than Brown Eyed Girl or Moondance?
Jones says: "I chose Comfort You impulsively, because it is a song that speaks to me and one I talk to in my heart. There is an incredible left-field beauty to the lyrics. Not many artists have covered this song so it also wasn't something where I thought there was already a definitive, sacrosanct version. Van Morrison always has a brilliant edge in his songwriting. If you see the part that goes . . .
You put the weight on me,
When it gets too much for me,
When it gets too much, much too much for me,
I'll do the same thing that you do, And I'll put the weight on you.
you can see a deceptively complex, and complicated song, about how lovers are, how relationships are. It could even be a parent with a child; and they are saying even though I will comfort you, what I really want is to be comforted."
Jones says there is a thread connecting the songs on The Devil You Know with a "mood maintained", in what she calls her "most carefully crafted album ever".
The Weight, a song made famous by The Band, is given a cool, detached make-over on a CD produced by Ben Harper, whose own composition, Masterpiece, stands up well amid celebrated company.
The oldest song is St James's Infirmary (originally an English folk song and turned into a jazz classic by Louis Armstong and later Billie Holiday). Had she grown up with that song?
Jones replies: "I never heard the Louis Armstrong version. On my album, it was a track done at the end of a day of recording. I told the crew to be sure not to use that one. It was just an idea and I was playing around singing in a key a lot higher than I normally use. We did it the next day in a lower key but Ben said he had already put all the instruments in and this was the one we would use. Some of the record was acquiescing to his opinion.
"It was a song I learned from my father. The phrasing is his. I would think of him walking down a street and experience the song through him. Every song is real to me, like a movie. Every time I get to play all the parts in a song, even the horses with the feather. I think the job I get to do is amazing."
Her father was a waiter called Richard. Rickie Lee is named after him ("it's the feminine version of Richard," he would tell her as a child) and led to quite a few fights with boys at school as she grew up. As well as her name, he gave her a musical education. She adds: "Dad was a musician, in a way, and his world was teaching me how to sing. He wrote a couple of beautiful songs and one time, after I had become famous, my friends made a recording of him singing with a big band. That recording must exist somewhere. He had a voice timbre like the Mills Brothers and, just like me, would sit behind the beat of a song. He had an articulated black voice, with a little Frank Sinatra thrown in."
Jones loves American soul records from the period 1965-1969. I wondered, given that, why there was no Aretha Franklin song on the album - or any by a woman composer for that matter. Had using 10 male writers been a conscious choice?
Jones explains: "That wasn't intentional. I did try Laura Nyro's Been On Train [Jones sings the line about the needles] but it didn't translate well. The music business has been weighted more to men writers over the past 50 years than women so there are so many more to choose from. I did also try a song by Stevie Nicks and one by Joni Mitchell but I couldn't reach the emotional connection to make them work."
The songs are more emotional than political or social ("If I did a political album the way I feel now I would end up in jail," she jokes) and have a likeably melancholy tone. She takes Donovan's Catch The Wind, for example, and strips away some of the 1960s chirpiness to reveal hard-edged sentiments. Jones says: "I've sung this one for 20 years and there is a delicate sadness to it woven into it. Donovan is a happy, hopeful guy and I see the song as saying 'there are pretty things but f-ck it's never gone happen', so I made the texture more melancholy."
Jones is herself a fine songwriter and has a 24-year-old daughter who is interested in singing. Does she remember the thrill of the late, great Lowell George choosing to record a version of her classy, hip song Easy Money?
"Now you're taking me back," she says. "It felt like all the doors to heaven had opened. I was pretty poor at the time and coming from a background with lots of poverty. That song opened the doors and meant I could do other things."
I tell her that Allen Toussaint raved about George when I met him at the Brecon Jazz Festival. "Oh, Lowell George was Radiohead, Paul McCartney, that stature. But he was a street guy who was reachable. He had so much soul and he was the top of the musical pyramid. When he came over to my little flat with his tape recorder to do Easy Money, it was like some mystical fiction."
Talking of the past, I wondered if she had considered doing a Tom Waits song, given their past romance. Jones says: "There was going to be a Tom Waits song on the album. It was The Heart Of Saturday Night, a song I liked before I met him. We recorded that and then Ben said: 'That's brave. I don't think I would do a song by an ex'. That interrupted the idea and when I looked up how many people had already recorded it, I thought, well he doesn't need any help anyway."
