Ten minutes bofore the agreed interview time, I arrive, ring the
doorbell and hear a child's voice shout, "Yes?" Sindri, Bjork's
eight-year-old son, pokes his head round the side of the house and squints
up at me. "Yes? What are you here for?" To talk to your mum, I say, and
follow him into the small back garder. He sits down on a bench and spins
his globe-cum-football, hiding his eyes under the peak of his blue baseball
cap. "She's gone to the shops," he eventually says. "This is where I'm
from," he continues, pointing at a tiny island north-east of the UK.
"Iceland. This is where I've been." He points with dirty fingernails to
Thailand, Bermany, Italy and a dozen more countries. He tells me the
highest mountain in Euope, that Italy and France are at present arguing
over a piece of land which separates them, and discusses different oceans
and seas. I felt half his age.
His mum comes down the alleyway and he shouts something in
Icelandic to her. Bjork is holding a carrier bag, wearing a big red coat,
a long, purple-grey satin dress, a light blue jumber and blue (no name)
sneakers. Her hair is tied back, her face brown and freckly. Bjork and
Sindri talk (fast and loud) in Icelandic, as she unpacks the food in the
kitchen. She drops two pita breads in the toaster, pours some orange
juice, slices the pita bread open, spreads cheese in them. Sindri easts
his lunch outside, talking to a friend who's wandered in through the back
gate. Bjork takes big bites of bread, chews a little then laughs,
open-mouthed, befores she's swallowed. I feel twice her age.
She chats about living near Little Venice in west London (she
bought the house in summer 1993), the local weirdos and snobs, feeling
content that Sindri is safe to play outside because of the huge communal
garden they back on to; Sindri's vast encyclopaedic knowledge which he
regularly recites, "without showing off, thank God"; searching out a good
school for him. Pretty normal, huh? Bjork Gudmundsdottir does a
convincing impression of a single mum in her late twenties whose debut solo
album just happens to have sold two million copies - until she starts
talking about music.
Bjork, who was brought up in a hippie household in Reykjavik, can't
remember a time in her life which didn't involve music. She attended a
music school between the ages of 5 and 15, made her first album at 11
(simply called Bjork, it sold 7,000 copies and became a plainum record in
Iceland - the country's population is a little over a quarter of a
million). She was constantly in and out of bands, until the Sugarcubes
formed in 1984. The group was never meant to be the indie success it
turned out to be; Bjork, Thor (Sindri's dad and Bjork's former husband) and
four other similar-minded musicians, painters, and poets sho were part of
Reykjavik's alternative art scene, formed the band, got drunk a lot, had
two memorable singles (the gorgeous, sensual "Birthday" and the hypnotic
"Hit") and a couple of dodgy, waywardly experimental albums before
splitting up in December 1992.
What made the Sugarcubes special were the gasping, childish,
untainted, almost naive vocals and the heart-shaped, cheeky, grinning face
with a wrinkled-up nose behind them. Bjork was always giong to be more
valuable alone than as part of the Sugarcubes, and moving to London and
teaming up with producer and technical whiz Nellee Hooper (who previously
lent Soul II Soul, Massive Attack, and Sinead O'Connor a touch of class)
was the most astute move she could've made. When a few preview cassettes
of Debut leaked out in early 1993, it was immediately clear that it was
going to be one of the albums of the year. Bjork and Nellee Hooper had
created a work of fractured genius, a quirky set of pop, clubby, and
occasionally jazzy songs mixed up with soft, tender and simplistic love
songs and a song spontaneously recorded in the Milk Bar's toilets while
Bjork was out clubbing one night.
"Solo Bjork is very different from Sugarcube bjork. As her own
entity she has become a superstar, a 1990s package of songs, image, and
soundbites - the Sunday Times Magazine (of the New York Times) went as far
as running a headline in February 1994 which claimed that her "fans hail
hail her as the new Madonna" and although they are musical chalk and cheese
(?) there is something very knowing and even manipulative about Bjork. If
her success is in part man (as in not woman) -made - Judy Blame, stylist
for "The Face" and i-D, dressed her up; photographer Jean Baptiste Mondino
shot her; Nellee Hooper produced, Graham Massey remixed - she has
ultimately stayed in control. Perhaps she is an alternative Madonna, the
child-woman to La Ciconne's whore-woman, deconstructing her clothing rather
than Catholicism.
Bjork's image seduced her fans and the media alike with its
kookiness. People with nothing better to do talked about how her name was
in fact pronounced "B-yerk", but then continued calling her "B-york"
because it sounds less pretentious. Ms. Gudmundsdottir is the first to
admit that she enjoys being thought of as kooky. "I like the weirdo tag
I've got. It's quite flattering because it makes me seem more interesting
than I am," she told Sunday Times Magazine. If she wasn't from this weird
country where the sun sometimes shines for 24 hours a day, Bjork might not
be quite such a mysterious curiousity - and her accent certainly wouldn't
be peppered with its mad mix of Icelandic and London.
Sitting on a chair made of wood and rope, Bjork fidgets constantly
as she chats: squashing her face, sticking a finger up a nostril, wrinkling
her nose and making loud phlegmy noises, pulling her dress up around her
underwear, stretching the arms of her jumper, yanking on a bra strap. Her
face is freckly, clear and make-up free. She is at her most intense when
she talks about music, moving from hushed tones to loud and squeaky
exclamations. She stutters and goes all coy when pushed to talk about her
first boyfriend and uses a mystical, book-at-bedtime voice when telling the
tooth-house anecdote. She pours strong coffee from a silver flask into two
espresse cups painted gold then forgets to drink any. Looking around the
living room -all whitewashed walls, stripped floors and big windows - she
smiles and says it reminds her of a summerhouse.
Sindri appears in the living room, singing something in Icelandic.
He scowls at mum and walks out again. bjork is taking him to Regent's park
Zoo - "you can't get too pc with kids" - and is running late. She opens a
walk-in wardrobe and pulls out a pink, cropped babydoll dress, which she
tugs over her satin dress. She tosses off her sneakers and steps into
outsized hiking boots then takes the band out of her hair and shakes it
free. Sindri sticks to shorts and a baseball cap. When they step out of
the black cab in front of the zoo's entrance, Sindri is wrenching his mum's
arm, anxious to see the animals, oblivious to people elbowing each other
and loudly whispering, "Look! Look! It's Bjork!""
"Grrrls: Viva Rock Divas", copyright 1995 by Amy Raphael, published by St.
Martin's Press
-joanna
jmg25@CORNELL.EDU
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