JOAN
AS POLICEWOMAN
Edited version published: Frankie #24 (July/Aug 2008)
When people talk about Joan Wasser, death inevitably comes up.
Like the fact she was Jeff Buckley’s girlfriend when he drowned.
Or that she wrote the track ‘We Don’t Own It’ after
her friend Elliott Smith committed suicide. Her music is marked by losing
people. Her second album To Survive was written while her mother
was dying of cancer last year. You wouldn’t blame her if she was
tired of talking about it.
“Look, people focus on death because it’s such a confusing
topic,” Joan says. “People just want to talk about death all
the time: ‘Death, death, death!’” Considering the subject
matter, she’s surprisingly chipper. “The fact is: it’s
part of life. You’re never going to be happy about it. But if you
learn to accept it, you can allow it to enhance your life.”
Perhaps that’s moreso the case for musicians. Lou Reed wrote Magic
and Loss after two close friends died, and Neil Young did the same
with Tonight’s the Night. Yoko Ono’s Season of
Glass came straight after John Lennon was killed. Smashing Pumpkins’s
Adore came after Billy Corgan lost his mother, while Arcade Fire
wrote Funeral after enduring a year of losing family members.
Most of us would loathe going back to work after losing a loved one. But
as a musician, Joan says that making music in the midst of death wasn’t
a horrible exercise. On the contrary, it felt necessary. “Thank
god for music, is all I gotta say. I feel like it’s saved my life,
over and over. I wrote songs about everything going on during this period.
So inevitably, those songs did end up being about my mum.
“She wasn’t a musician, but she was a music lover. She did
have a huge influence on the fact I’m doing music now. She always
said, “You seem the happiest when you’re making music.”
That’s truly why I studied music, so I have her to thank.”
In fact, the title track of the record, ‘To Survive,’ is based
on memories of how Joan’s mother sang to her, when she was a child.
Though she’s lost family, lovers and friends, some of Joan’s
biggest influences aren’t only alive and kicking—they’re
flamboyantly and dramatically so. She cites Antony Hegarty (of Antony
and the Johnsons) as the reason she sings today, while Rufus Wainwright
encourages her work ethic. “Rufus is a big proponent of practising,”
she says. “It sounds boring, but practice works. Even if he has
the worst night of his life, it’s going to be spectacular.”
Being a classically trained musician also helps her in the discipline
department. Despite the punk-rock touches on her soul records, Joan isn’t
a DIY musician by any stretch. She started playing piano when she was
six, and picked up the violin at eight. At one stage, she was a violinist
for the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
“As a classical musician, you’re always told: ‘You’re
never good enough; you’ll never play as well as you should,’”
she says. “That’s going overboard. But I did learn to keep
doing it, persevere, move forward through it. Even if it’s painful,
even if it’s scary, even if it sounds awful that day, the next day,
it’ll sound better.”
That sort of discipline might come in handy soon, seeing as she’s
about to tour and promote an album so close to home. However, considering
how loudly Joan talks throughout the interview, and how often she breaks
out into unexpected bursts of laughter, you get the sense the prospect
doesn’t bother her. “I know what it is to be sad,” she
sings on ‘To Survive.’ “It never goes, so learn to hold
it close as a friend.” For Joan Wasser, that isn’t meant to
be advice. Think of it more as a manifesto.
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Benjamin Law 2007