PJ Harvey: Siren Rising

1998

INTRODUCTION

THE PASSION OF

POLLY JEAN HARVEY

PASSION / n. 1. strong barely controllable emotion. 2. an outburst of anger (flew into a passion). 3. intense sexual love. 4a. strong enthusiasm (has a passion for football). b. an object arousing this. 5. (the Passion) a. Relig. The suffering of Christ during his last days. b. a narrative of this from the Gospels. c. a musical setting of any of these narratives.

THE CONCISE OXFORD DICTIONARY

OF CURRENT ENGLISH, EIGHTH EDITION, 1990

Passion is a strange and powerful quality that, in its broadest sense, is inextricably linked to Art, both being a visible expression of uncontainable emotion. It is a quality that is sadly missing from a great deal of music these days, having been largely replaced by the manufactured pop championed by programmes like Pop Idol and Fame Academy. And yet, in seeking to manufacture music, the industry executives betray a gross misunderstanding of the very nature of real Art, as it is, by this same nature, unfakeable. They are like those scientists striving to create Artificial Intelligence, bastardising the most basic concept of the soul in their obsession with the superficial. On the surface, the results of both these parties may well resemble something of spirit, of substance, but scratch a little deeper and you will find a foundation based on a set of predetermined formulae. And art is a sphere in which such steadfast rules have no home – the reason why a real Picasso will fetch millions and an imitation – no matter how perfectly executed – will only ever be worth a fraction of that amount. The true connoisseur of Art understands that an original passion, creation, can never be recaptured, hence its value.

This is one of the many reasons why Polly Jean Harvey is such an extraordinary artist. In an industry that thrives on bland commercialism, she has managed to build a career on an almost wilful dismissal of all that is popular and mainstream, only striving to be true to her own artistic passions. The results, seven studio albums which have confounded critics and defied classification with their visceral extremes of blues-drenched rock, have been uneasy listening – confrontational, angry, ethereal and baffling in turns. And yet they all have the spark of passion that defies ambivalent listening. The proof of this passion lies in the story of her artistic career, a career that has seen her battle with depression and dissatisfaction with her own work – a dissatisfaction that has spurred her on to explore many different directions, both musically and artistically, turning her hand to many other projects in the quest for that ever-elusive fulfilment. Film music, dance, poetry, sculpture and acting are just some of the avenues her pursuit of perfection has led her to try. And the results of all have been as captivating as her music, thanks to the soul that lies behind them.

Her earliest work has lumbered her with a reputation as a man-hating harpy thanks to lyrics that explored uncomfortable territory such as vengeance, mutilation, the pain of sex and the desperation of love. But as she herself has acknowledged, all of these works have centred on love and its incredible array of effects on the human psyche, so it isn’t too surprising that her last, and most commercially successful album – 2000’s Mercury Prize-winning Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea – showcased a romanticism that many found hard to ally with the image they had constructed around her. As she herself told Time Out in 2001, Love songs aren’t always about being in a relationship. It can be the love of creativity or spirituality. I think of creativity as a loving thing. It’s passion, I suppose, more than anything.

This artistic integrity has led Polly to eschew the publicity-seeking stunts that accompany most rock careers, jealously guarding her private life with a reclusiveness that is reminiscent of that other eccentric Great British talent, Kate Bush. Indeed, like Bush, Harvey has sealed the sanctity of her private life by surrounding herself with a group of musicians, producers and collaborators who are, first and foremost, friends, most of whom have been working with her from the very genesis of her career, which can make it extremely hard to pin down anything of substance about the real woman behind this stirring body of work. Fortunately for us, she has left tracks in many places, tracks which can be pieced together like a jigsaw to reveal something of her own drives and experiences. True, Harvey has hidden many of the pieces up her sleeve, and probably thrown others on the fire. But those that remain can give us a valuable insight into her life and career that may bring us a little bit closer to understanding the artist.

Those who know how fiercely Harvey guards her privacy may well view this book as an intrusion, but I would beg to differ, preferring to see it as a tribute to an artist and her work. In telling her story, I do not seek to lift the veil and rend the inner sanctum. Instead, I seek only to describe what lies behind the veil without directly showing it. Indeed, only Harvey herself could lift the veil completely. But until she does, I hope this book will stand as a testament to her talent, a tribute that even she may accept.

James R. Blandford

Valentine’s Day 2004

Chapter ONE

WEST COUNTRY GIRL

"I feel I have an advantage because of the life I’ve seen when I was brought up.

It’s so completely different from what I’m experiencing now. I’ve got that to measure it by - the countryside and what is important there. What you see is what you get in the countryside. People speak their minds and you know they’re not lying."

POLLY HARVEY, ALTERNATIVE PRESS, 1993

This is a local place, for local people. There’s nothing for you here.

THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN

Situated on the south-west coast of England, nestled among the cluster of counties known as the West Country, Dorset’s rugged landscape and vast bleak moorlands are as thick with phantoms and folklore as the fogs that billow in from the English Channel. The county’s strong pagan heritage still makes its presence felt in local custom and lore, nowhere more so than in local landmarks such as the brooding burial mounds which litter the landscape and the ancient 180-foot chalk-carved Cerne Abbas Giant. Carved on the side of Trendle Hill, this ithyphallic deity is said to be named after the Celtic horned god Cernunnos, and fertility rites were conducted on its site for many years. It is a fierce symbol of male virility with its raised club and enormous penis, and when a local clergyman demanded the offending member of the Giant be ploughed over, the villagers stopped him, convinced their crops would fail. Now owned by the National Trust, the figure was scoured every seven years accompanied by an orgiastic festival of love-making until the Church intervened. But local couples are still said to pilgrimage by the light of the Full Moon to make love on its phallus, thus ensuring a healthy pregnancy.

Yule festivities in some of the area’s smaller villages are still lead by the Dorset Woosers or Oosers, local men clad in animal skins and horned masks, keepers of ancient traditions that persist in spite of churchly condemnation. In fact, as recently as 1911 a Dorset newspaper carried a report of a local man being charged with frightening some young women while chasing them clad in a bullock’s skin and wearing an ooser. And a more grisly reminder of the county’s pagan past was provided by the excavation of a long barrow near the great Maiden Castle earthwork, which attracted widespread interest when it was found to contain human remains bearing all the hallmarks of ritual sacrifice and cannibalism.

Yet the area has a gentler aspect in its desolate beauty and imputed Arthurian connections, Morris dancers and scrumpy. Indeed, this is the home of Ham Hill, the part of England made famous by Thomas Hardy, factors which have long combined with its thriving surf scene to attract many settlers in search of rural bliss. A few miles to the east of Crewkerne and a stone’s throw from the Cerne Abbas Giant, Corscombe is one of the more traditionally beautiful of local parishes, a sleepy 600-strong community that lies between two hills and boasts the beautiful St Mary’s Church and a telephone box, as well as the charming 16th Century Fox Inn public house. The Fox Inn is an award winning thatched pub that boasts a slew of traditional features including flagstone floors, inglenook fireplaces, beams, slate-topped bars and polished copper in abundance. With a regular clientele, many of whom have been drinking there for decades, the Inn is the village’s social focal point, painted cream and covered with roses in the summer, the veritable epitome of the rustic village pub, serving local produce which has earned the proprietors a deservedly high reputation.

But, like most of the area, Corscombe too has its own storehouse of local legend, including the story of one of the villages more peculiar residents, Thomas Hollis, a book editor, scholar and nephew of one of Harvard University’s principal benefactors. Hollis had a morbid fear of a lingering death, and for reasons best known to himself eschewed milk, sugar, butter and alcohol. It is said that when his house went up in flames, he emerged carrying only his portrait of John Milton and when he eventually died in 1774 – quite suddenly, fortunately for him, while issuing instructions to farmhands – he was buried according to his own wishes in one of his fields. A man of no religious convictions, he asked that his grave should be 10 feet deep and subsequently ploughed over, leaving no trace of his final resting place. Legend has it that his horse was shot and buried with him, and locals claim he lies either at Urless Farm, where he lived, or at Harvard Farm, just north of nearby Halstock.

Another former resident, Robert Fawn of Corscombe, is remembered for more ghoulish reasons. After the Battle of Sedgemoor in 1685, he was hanged with 12 other Monmouth supporters before being dismembered and boiled in pitch. The resulting gruesome mess was displayed in public, while George Penne – who owned Weston Manor and Oak Farm – was given 100 prisoners for his help in subduing the rebellion, prisoners he later sold to plantation owners in America and the West Indies.

The Corscombe of the late Sixties, however, was a much more peaceful locale and it was here that Ray and Eva Harvey settled shortly after marriage, taking over a small farm, or smallholding, just over the road from the Fox Inn, Mosfas Little Acre. Native West Countrians, the Harveys had met while working at the nearby Yeovil-based Westland Helicopters company before marrying at a young age, Eva being only nineteen. They shared a passion for music and decided that Corscombe was the perfect place to raise a family, soon carving themselves a niche in the local community thanks to their practical artistic leanings and love of music. They had a son seven years after settling, the unusually named Saul John Raymond, followed three years later by a daughter, the more conventionally named Polly Jean – a Libran who arrived on October 9, 1969.

The Harveys spent the next few years diligently building up their own cottage industry, Ray as a quarryman and Eva as a stonemason – the rather unimaginatively titled Harvey Stone – now specialising in new and reclaimed stone and masonry, fireplaces, flagstones and flooring. They had been attracted to the area by the proliferation of the native honey-coloured hamstone, a Jurassic sedimentary limestone named after the local Ham Hill where only one quarry remains and from which many of the ancient cottages that litter the villages and moors are constructed, and Ray worked solidly throughout the Sixties and Seventies salvaging and reselling any reusable materials he could find from demolition sites throughout the area. As Polly Harvey would later recall, they were country people who came from that generation that had nothing, and built up and made something of their lives.

Polly’s early childhood was blissfully idyllic, and she soon developed a natural love of performance, delighting in entertaining family and friends from the age of four or thereabouts with puppet performances and enacting stories such as Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I always had a huge desire to perform, she told the LA Times in 1992. I had little string puppets and I’d build theatres and I’d get all my family lined up and I’d write plays and perform them. The rest of her play time was spent with elder brother Saul. He was the only person I grew up with, him and his friends, she told Alternative Press in 1993. There were no girls in the village. So I grew up with men. I learned with men.

This wasn’t a problem at first, and she delighted in traditionally masculine childhood pursuits such as playing with Action Men. I had three of them, she would later tell NME. I got one of those with the eyes that move but I didn’t like that so much. But one used to have the gripping hands, and all of their fingers fell off in about a week of playing with them. She also indulged in war games with Saul and his friends. We’d play the Germans versus the British and we’d dress up in all the right gear and everything – green boilersuits – and we’d climb trees and ambush each other. The river also provided a rich source of entertainment for the Harvey children: You would go down there every day, she later recalled. It would always find something for you to do. Years later, she would recall playing in the river for ages, and just lifting up the stones and seeing what was under there and listening to the different sounds the river would make if you just moved some stones around. And just building dams and things like that.

Inevitably, Saul and his friends weren’t always ecstatic about Polly tagging along all the time, so when she found herself alone she would exercise her imagination, as she later recalled in the Observer. Probably because of your lack of playmates, you create your own fantasies within yourself. It had the benefit of making me really explore my imagination as a child. I had imaginary friends and whole situations, and I did a lot of physically making things, making my own toys. The woodlands that proliferate in the area also provided a rich source of entertainment for Polly’s fertile imagination. A copse wouldn’t be a clump of trees, but a castle with a magnificent drawbridge. Thus spake the voice of a child weaned on the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the younger Polly soon grew to emulate her brother to the extent of peeing while sitting backwards on the toilet, cutting her hair short and insisting he and his friends call her Paul. This led to a fairly traumatic experience when she realised she was, in fact, a girl and therefore expected to act, and dress, differently from boys. I was devastated because I wanted to be a boy and I was a girl. My mum was trying to make me wear a dress. I ended up wearing the dress for a day, then took it off. I just really didn’t want to wear a dress. I couldn’t understand why I had to wear one and my brother didn’t. I wanted to have a willy like my brother and I didn’t have one.

Despite this disappointment, Polly soon started to find a love of music, encouraged by her parents’ huge and brilliant record collection which would later flavour a great deal of her own work. These records were her earliest introduction to the likes of Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Captain Beefheart, though she also became fond of more mainstream staples such as The Bay City Rollers, Mud and Pan’s People courtesy of Top Of The Pops. Her mother was a particularly big fan of Dylan and Polly would later recall that her parents were always Stones fans rather than Beatles fans. However, coping with her parents’ love of music wasn’t always so easy for the young Polly, as she later recalled Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica album being played through Sunday lunch – It made me feel ill – and, most upsettingly, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon: It was frightening, it made me cry. Eventually mum and dad stopped playing it because it always had me in floods of tears.

It didn’t stop there though, as Polly told Q in 1995: My family are absolutely addicted to music. It is as important to them as eating, drinking and breathing. It was a natural part of my life and it wasn’t something that I questioned. Sometimes I found it a bit annoying, because mum and dad would come back home late and put records on and it was like the tables were turned. But I’m really lucky to have had a mother and father like that. I mean, they really are rockers, much more than I am. I now realise that I can still put on any record of their collection and know every single word, it’s just all in there. I’ve listened to the blues since I was zero years old.

A rare glimpse into this legendary record collection was provided in 2003, when Polly donated a snap of Ray and Eva posing with their twenty favourite albums for a feature in The Sunday Times Magazine titled ‘Starfish In Their Eyes’. The piece previewed a project called On The Other Side Of The Lens, which had been sponsored by Canon to raise funds for the Red Cross. The aim of the project was for celebrities to contribute one or more photographs that reflected a little of their personal life, and the images were to be used in a book and an exhibition which ran at North London’s Tram Studios for the last two weeks of November. Among the records proudly clutched by her parents are The J Geils Band’s 1972 Fullhouse Live LP, The Who’s Who By Numbers, Trini Lopez’s Greatest Hits, Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited and The Band’s eponymous second album, as well as titles by Bill Haley, Little Richard and The Rolling Stones. Any records of their daughter’s were only conspicuous by their absence. As well as the shot of her parents, she contributed a stark self-portrait.

The family’s eccentricities weren’t limited to their love of music though. Mrs Harvey made a good deal of her living carving headstones, a Gothic pursuit by anyone’s standards, and Polly would later describe her as completely eccentric, an extrovert. She elaborated on this theme, perhaps apocryphally, to Alternative Press, claiming that my mum drinks bleach because she thinks it does her body good. Her father, meanwhile, goes out and quarries rock all day and comes home covered head to floor in stone dust. But in spite of their somewhat left-field tendencies, they managed that peculiarly rural British paradox of being Conservative in their political ideals, as Polly explained to Spin in 1995: I think my dad would protest to being a hippie. For instance, my mum and dad are Conservative and loads of other people I know are too. Conservative artists, there you go. A lot of country people are. A lot of farmers are.

Despite their conservatism, the family were not religious and, accordingly, Polly remained unbaptised with no religious education save that afforded by the typical primary school assemblies and bland recitation of the Lord’s Prayer and Grace. In earlier centuries this would certainly have marked her out as different. It’s worth remembering that in rural folklore an unbaptised child is the property of the Devil, certainly a witch and quite likely subject to lycanthropy and vampirism. On death, she would have been buried either at the crossroads or in some lonely unconsecrated patch of churchyard. But this is the 21st Century, and fortunately for the Harveys it’s a long time since Dorset was bothered with unwonted outbursts of vampirism.

In spite of the outwardly idyllic country life, living on a farm meant that the young Harvey wasn’t spared the realities of Nature, red in tooth and claw, by her parents, who may claim some degree of responsibility for the adult Polly’s strong stomach. Although collecting eggs, milking the cows and the occasional sheep-dip don’t sound too traumatic tasks, there were sides of farm life that were less than pleasant by anyone’s standards. I’ve had to deliver lambs and stuff when I was younger, Polly revealed to NME in 1993. I used to ring all the lambs’ tails and ring their testicles. I’d clear up dead lambs when they came out in bits – because sometimes they’d decompose inside the sheep and you’d take them out bit by bit. And I wonder if it’s hardened my stomach to things like that. She was also exposed to a weird side of nature when the family cat went missing, only to turn up six months later in an outhouse in an advanced state of natural mummification. He was shrunk a bit, she told Dazed & Confused, and his skin cured. But we could tell he was ours because his right ear was bent like ours. The family apparently still proudly display this ghoulish spectacle on a shelf in the front room, which at least rendered the services of a taxidermist happily unnecessary.

The family’s cattle and poultry were an equally unusual lot, and the Harveys eventually stopped taking the sheep to the market as they had, by Polly’s own account, become too much like pets. Polly would later tell NME that they had rescued 15 damaged and traumatised chickens from a battery farm, most of whom had gnarled and atrophied feet from their confinement and had stopped laying eggs. Thanks to their rescue, some apparently recovered, and slowly but surely their feet began to heal thanks to their new-found freedom and copious amounts of food. They began to lay eggs again, too. One chicken had gone blind and had to be kept and fed separately as she couldn’t see to feed herself, but even she began to lay again – strange, double-pointed eggs with unusually fragile shells, but edible eggs nonetheless which the family enjoyed.

But the young Polly Jean had a more traditionally feminine relationship with animals, harbouring equestrian tendencies, as she would reveal years later in Q magazine. I’ve always loved animals and still do. From the age of four to about twenty I rode horses. I competed in one day eventing: that’s showjumping, dressage and cross-country. Mild competition when I was four, of course, but then you progress and go into gymkhanas, and then eventing later on. I could have gone into purely working with horses and competing. I’m a very competitive person. If I’m going to do something, I want to be the best at it. For a time, this wide-ranging and valuable experience of animals and their various quirks led Polly to consider veterinary work as a very real career possibility.

Polly was also inevitably influenced by the semi-mythical surroundings where she grew up, near to the alleged site of Camelot and highly aware of the area’s pagan past thanks to her mother’s collection of books on folklore and superstition. There are a lot of burial grounds and Iron Age forts, she later remembered. "And big old hills where