Singer-songwriter Martha Wainwright joins to discuss her latest album and new memoir about growing up in a family of rock ‘n’ roll royalty and her experiences with love, loss, motherhood, divorce, and the music industry.
Debbie Millman:
A good title serves as an invitation, and Martha Wainwright knows not only how to craft that invitation, but how to deliver it in the most persuasive and penetrating manner. One of her most famous songs is titled Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole. Now, who wouldn’t want to know who that song is about and what wrong they caused? Martha Wainwright’s second album was titled, I Know You’re Married, but I’ve Got Feelings, Too. That Too was enigmatic. Even the title of her memoir published in 2022 is a bit of a cliffhanger, stories I Might Regret Telling You. The book is about growing up in a family of rock and roll royalty and how she managed to find her own distinct musical voice. Martha joins me today from Montreal to talk about her life, her memoir, and her latest album with another irresistible title, Love Will Be Reborn. Martha Wainwright, welcome to Design Matters.
Martha Wainwright:
Hi.
Debbie Millman:
Martha, is it true you love the way New York City smells?
Martha Wainwright:
Yes, it is true. That’s something that I wrote in the memoir. I remember as a kid going down three, four times a year to visit my dad. I lived in Montreal, as I do now, when I was a kid. And I just felt that the smell, I think it was the pavement or whatever was happening, whatever was in the air really hit my olfactory sense in a way that excited me and made it unforgettable.
Debbie Millman:
Your memoir, Stories I Might Regret Telling You, came out last year, is now out in paperback. You start the book recounting how your father didn’t want your mother to have you and pressured her to have an abortion. She had you anyway. In his song, That Hospital, your dad sings about the experience and he writes, “The little girl that was born there, that escaped that scrape with fate, a few months ago in Montreal, I watched her graduate.” How did you find out you almost weren’t born?
Martha Wainwright:
Well, my dad told me. Which I don’t think was the greatest idea. The book opens up with that scene or it opens up with that truth that I had been told when I was 14 years old, about almost not being born. And it’s not a judgment on the decision to have an abortion or to not have an abortion or whether that was right or wrong or anything like that. It was more a comment on having heard that from a parent at 14, which is already sort of an uncertain age. It’s where I start the book in terms of someone who has always felt a little out of place or not sure of herself or not knowing where to go and how to be. And so it would seem to me to be an obvious springboard into the story. It is certainly a bit of a abrupt start.
He told me late one night and maybe out of remorse, out of sadness, or out of trying to connect. But one of the things also that I think I talked a little bit about in the book, or a realization that I made through writing the book and looking about the relationship with my dad, which has been a distanced one, a loving one, but with a lot of kilometers between us, is that when you don’t bring up your kids on a daily basis, where you’re not taking care of them daily and understanding that dynamic of parent and child and the responsibility of the parent to protect child more. Where it’s not a relationship that is only about honesty and openness and treating them as equals, but there’s a dynamic that is learnt in that daily care. I think when you don’t have that, it’s hard to know how to be with your kids. And that’s what I think maybe Loudon didn’t recognize and maybe it’s not his fault that he didn’t recognize that because he didn’t really know how to be a dad, if that makes sense.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, absolutely. You were born to rock and roll royalty. For our listeners, I just want to sort of paint the picture of your lineage. Your mother and her sister performed as the legendary folk duo Kate and Anna McGarrigle. Your father is the prolific Grammy Award-winning songwriter, Loudon Wainwright III. You describe your brother Rufus Wainwright as one of the most famous singers in the world. Your father’s sister Sloan and your half sister Lucy Wainwright Roche are also singers. Lucy’s actually been on Design Matters as well. Your family is as famous for what they write about in their music as the music itself, and as far as I can tell, there’s no other family in rock and roll history that has ever written more about each other and that includes the Jacksons, the Osmonds, the Staple Singers, even the Braxtons. Do you think that the stories you share about each other are unusual? Or do you think that you’re all just more honest than the other family groups?
Martha Wainwright:
Well, you said rock and roll. I was sort of thinking of it as that kind of folk dynasty more in the sense that it kind of came out of an older type of music. And also folk should be accessible to people usually through talking about humanity or politics or the music of the people. The temperature of what is occurring in the community at that time. And the songwriter tells a story of people behind the scenes and, much of it, behind the walls in the family life, the secrets or the relationships. And so I’ve always found that as songwriters in our family, I think that that’s been something that we all seem to have hooked into. And for better or for worse, we probably would be making more money if we were able to write simpler pop songs just in terms of getting a hook, getting a great line, or whatever.
But I also think, in the case of our family specifically, you talk about my parents, but even before that there was Loudon Wainwright II. Loudon’s dad who-
Debbie Millman:
Famous editor.
Martha Wainwright:
He’s written… Exactly, famous editor. And editorialist. He wrote A View from Here, which is a column that was in Life Magazine for 50 years. And he wrote often about his own family and the American family and the dynamic of the family and of course set in the era that he was in and in the story of the day. So that already had started a generation before. And there was a struggle between him and his son, my dad, Loudon Wainwright III. So already this sort of father son competition, which my dad has written about a lot in songs and contemplated that relationship with his dad and then, of course, with his son Rufus. Where they have a competitive element to it.
Less and less, but certainly at the beginning of Rufus’s career, Rufus’s career was very illustrious and impressive and exciting. And Loudon has been honest in his anxiety around it. But that kind of dynamic that we seem to see over and over and over again in literature and in people’s lives. And it’s this willingness to talk about it that is sort of surprising and not often done in the form of a song and over several generations and in response to a family member’s other song or whatever. I don’t know if it’s unprecedented, this thing of songwriting in response to one another with these intimate relationships. But the thing that I always find about it is that the more personal that we get, the more I think people see themselves and feel connected to the stories because they recognize them as something that is similar or has commonalities with their own lives.
Debbie Millman:
In many ways, they’re Shakespearean stories. You also write quite candidly about your relationship with your mother, sharing both the sublime and the difficult. And you revealed that since you were old enough to understand words, she told you how hardheaded you were, how you had a chip on your shoulder. She didn’t like these qualities in you, and you state that you didn’t like these qualities in you either. So I have two questions about this. Did you agree with her about those qualities? And how do you feel about those qualities now?
Martha Wainwright:
I was able to talk openly about my mother because she’s dead. I don’t know where our relationship was going and where it would’ve evolved to, but when she was diagnosed with cancer when she was 60, my relationship with her changed. The conflict and the anger that I had towards her, I wanted to really flip that around and have the remaining time that I had with her to be very loving and make up for some of the bad stuff that we had gone through. Maybe that would’ve happened over time naturally, but I really knew that our time was limited. So I really wanted to consider all those things that she told me and all those things that affected me, that made me sad or upset when I was younger, whether it was, as you say, being too hardheaded or being overly earnest and things that she felt were not great qualities.
And I think that they stung because I was afraid that she was right. And maybe that was why she was telling them to me, because she wanted me to face some of those facts about it. I certainly believed her because she was a very believable person and because I was, as I said, afraid that she might be right and I wanted to adjust. Looking back, I don’t think that she was right. And she was probably not right to say anything too negative about her kids because I don’t really know if much good can come out of it. But it did form me and it did propel me to write in a way that was in-your-face and was confrontational with a lot of emotion and with vulnerability and anger. And so that defined my artistry at a young age and I did push back.
She created an environment where I was then able to gain confidence through this songwriting style. And she was really impressed by the first set of songs that I wrote and quickly changed her tune. And as she watched me though, start my career, which was a very rocky start, and was filled with insecurity and insecurity that she had probably partially caused, and also excess and mistakes. And she also was worried about that and those behaviors in me and she would warn me. And I think, in that instance, she was correct. And she was a concerned mother. And so I don’t fault her for that at all. And when, at 30, I discovered that she was sick, or we discovered, I really wanted to turn things around to show her before she left this earth that I was going to be okay. And that was hard to do, but it was a good thing for me to do and she helped me do it, too.
Debbie Millman:
While you lived with your mom and brother in Montreal for most of the time, when you were 14, you went to live with your dad for a year when your mom and her sister went on the road. And you’ve written about how during that year you lived with Loudon, you became more like him as if the DNA in you that came from him started to wake up, almost like a switch got turned on. Was that when you first considered becoming a musician as well?
Martha Wainwright:
Well, that year, I was a attending Friends Seminary in Manhattan and I had a math teacher who was very frustrated with my performance, with my homework and my work ethic, and she said, “What do you want to do all your life? Sing and dance?” Of course, the answer was yes. I didn’t say anything, I just sort of listened to her. But it was a great realization and helpful to me to think, “Okay, I don’t have to put this pressure on myself to say, what am I going to do? Am I going to become a mathematician? Am I going to become an accountant? Am I going to become a lawyer? Am I going to become…”
There was so many people around me that were quite high-achieving as well. You know, go to a school like Friends Seminary that has a lot of people who are very upwardly mobile. My mother was really high achieving. I’d been to some pretty good schools, so there was a pressure to succeed. And so when she said that, I thought, “Well, that’s probably not the worst route for me. That’s probably my best bet.” So that was a relief. And at first, when at 14, I was more interested in theater because I was appalled at the amount of songwriting that was going on around me. And Rufus was constantly on the piano banging away. So I thought, “Well, theater could be more for me.” And I wanted to do very serious plays and be a serious actress. And then of course I started writing songs a few years later and that seemed a lot easier than trying to do a Pinter play or something.
Debbie Millman:
I love the part of memoir where you audition for the National Theater School of Canada with a monologue from Antigone. Talk about high bar. How did you learn how to write music? I know your dad gave you a Sigma guitar when you were 13. Did he teach you how to play? Did you teach yourself how to play? Did Rufus or Kate teach you how to play the piano?
Martha Wainwright:
Loudon wasn’t around. He gave me the guitar, but my mom showed me three chords. So I got the guitar when I was 12 and didn’t touch it much. I was taught an A chord, a D chord, and a G chord, and maybe an E chord. Three or four chords, which are all you need to write any masterpiece, really. Your muscles have to start to be able to play those things because it hurts. So I did not have any guitar lessons or anything like that. And my brother was always on the piano, so I didn’t play the piano. I did not have a guitar teacher. I played a little bit of violin, so I knew how to read music and my fingers could move a little bit on the fretboard. But it was really my mother who taught me those chords. And then she taught me a simple picking pattern. And very much by just doing it over and over and over again, you get faster and faster and faster and it’s easier and easier.
So a very simple rhythm guitar style. And I wasn’t obsessive about it, I wasn’t passionate about it, but once I could play a few chords, then I could accompany myself. And that’s where it got exciting for me. And so generally, I remember it started with learning some Elvis Presley songs, country songs. Things like that are really easy. So That’s All Right Now, Mama and things like that, where I could accompany myself and sing. That would’ve been at around, I don’t know, 15 or something like that. And I could perform that. I could play at a talent show or something. And that was exciting because that was a freedom where just me and this simple instrument that I don’t need to plug in can sort of create a sound that is independent. That was powerful. And then soon after, I tried writing songs and things came.
Debbie Millman:
You say this about your voice in the book, and I’d like to read it verbatim. “One person’s voice is handed to them like a gift. Another person has to create a voice literally in her gut, her heart, her throat. Some people seem to channel someone else’s voice, taking it on and welcoming it. Your body is your own, but sometimes it’s also a tool for someone else to come through. Sometimes singing feels like a skill and sometimes it feels like an art. Singing has saved my life. Sometimes I feel that if it weren’t for being able to sing, I would not be here. I would’ve died by misadventure or taken my own life, but that might be a load of cow shit. I can really sit in sadness, as you might have guessed, but I can get out of it pretty easily, too often by singing.”
Martha, over the years, how have you found your own voice? And when did you realize that you’re really a fine original singer?
Martha Wainwright:
Well, I think that my own voice was always there, but it wasn’t appreciated by others. Or if it was appreciated by others, going back to some personality traits that weren’t very useful to me, I either didn’t believe them or I didn’t want their opinion or recommendation. So there was a hardheadedness. Recently, I found some recordings of me singing as a kid. My mother and Aunt Anna McGarrigle did some music for some kids’ movies in the eighties and nineties, and they had me sing a couple of songs for the credits and things like that. And I sound just like I sound today, I sound like I’m eight and I sound like I’ve been smoking for a bunch of years, but I’m a little pitchy, it’s a little off-key. I’m twanging. I’m bending the node. I’m not doing it probably how a director would’ve wanted me to do it.
It’s the kind of thing where I would’ve gotten to the callback but not gotten the part because I wasn’t willing to bend to what the director needed me to do. And it was a hardheadedness and a sort of unwillingness to change. But in a way then, what happened is that people had to come to me rather than me come to them, in some ways, artistically. And when I was writing songs and doing shows and trying to get a record label in my twenties, I was not fitting a mold that was suitable for record labels. And producers worked with me and they tried to adjust my songwriting and I was difficult to work with.
Not that I wasn’t nice, but I just sort of walked out of the situation or turned away from it or sabotaged it in some way. And I guess I just wanted them to like me for who I am and who I was. It took time for that to happen, but I think that it made it set when the first record came out and to the larger public, people remarked on its originality or something. Not that musically, it wasn’t super original. It wasn’t like crazy or anything musically. But I think that the singing voice and the songwriting was different than other people’s and it was remarked on. That was the way I had to get there.
Debbie Millman:
In an old interview I read in Believer Magazine, you stated that to create a rhythm, you play the guitar more violently than most women play the guitar. And then in various places throughout the memoir, you talk about being intimidated by guitar playing and that you wish that you were better at it. If you were better at it, do you think you would be less distinctive? You have a very distinctive style to your playing.
Martha Wainwright:
That’s interesting. That is true. I worked for a long time with a piano player who was classically trained, and it was early on, and he was always so surprised at my chord choices and some of the things I did musically because he found it to be quite sophisticated. But it wasn’t that I was sophisticated, it was actually just completely naive. And it was by not knowing what I was playing, that I sort of went to a different chord that people would normally go to or say, “Okay, well yeah, after this chord, you can go here, here, or here.” But because I had to try out many things, I was not as constrained, in a way. And he was really envious of that because for him, having music been drilled into him, he felt that he was not as creative as maybe he wished he could be in that way.
He’s creative in other ways and I’m envious of his ability to play. But I thought that that was an interesting positive thing about not being sure of what you’re doing. And yes, I think that because I don’t play licks on the guitar or play the melody a lot on the guitar, I play a more rhythm guitar style. So my left hand is kind of quite limited to what it’s doing, and I’m not playing lead guitar. What that means is that I have to accompany myself and there has to be quite a bit going on in the guitar. So it has to get loud, it has to get quiet, it has to be dug in, it has to have maybe an interesting open chord every once in a while. The guitar does have to do a lot with a little. The skills aren’t that huge there, so I think that I’m trying to use the skills that I do have to their fullest.
Debbie Millman:
Rufus is a few years older than you, so it’s not surprising that he signed a record deal before you did. He started touring the world and you, at that time, became his backup singer and joined fellow backup singer Joan Wasser, now known as Joan As Police Woman on the road. Joan has also been on the show and is a dear friend. What was that like for you to be a backup singer? And I think it seemed, from what I read, to be a very formative time for you.
Martha Wainwright:
It was really defining for me, musically. Before Rufus put out records, I was his backup singer in Montreal, and he would play weekly shows when he was 19, 20 and I was 17. I probably was 16 when we started and when he was first writing his first songs. And those first set of songs, not all of them, but quite a few of them had me on them singing sort of a duet. He would write everything. It wasn’t my making, he would tell me very specifically what to sing. But we practiced for hours and hours a day and performed them a lot, around Montreal in particular, sometimes in New York. And this was before he got a record deal. So it was about two or three years of that and just him showing me, asking me to sing things that were really not in my brain at all. Sing really high, sing low, follow his melody in harmony, sustained notes for a really long time, because he has a really impressive voice. Rufus really put me through my paces.
It was kind of quite acrobatic, his parts that he would write.. And maybe he was torturing me, maybe he was doing it on purpose and he would make us practice over and over and over again, and then I would just kind of get angry. I’d be like, “I’m out of here.” But that listening capacity that he created in me, and of course, my mother loved watching this. Obviously she had sung her whole life with her sister more as a duet, but just seeing her two kids sing together and blending and doing that sort of classic family sound thing that happens when families hang together and made her so happy. I think it, at first, she would’ve wanted us to do some type of a duet thing. And then, of course, it was really obvious that both of us were really also wanted to do our own thing and that wasn’t going to work, as we would end up killing each other. But it was such a huge thing.
And then when he did get his record deal and I came down and I recorded those songs and then we went on the road for his first record and then his second record. Just touring with him, he brought me to Japan, he brought me all over Europe, all over the United States. We were opening up for people like Roxy Music and big, big bands. Then he would have his shows. And then I became his opening act, oftentimes, and I had little EPs that I had pressed up myself with my own songs on them. And they weren’t available in stores, and so I would sell them in his shows and people were really impressed with me and intrigued and because they couldn’t buy the CD in the store, I would sometimes sell a hundred CDs a night.
And I’d have these wads of cash in my top drawer and I was able to make a living, because of Rufus, starting from the age of 20 years old. I was selling my CD at his shows, walking away with a grand a night and paying my rent. And it was really, as I say, formative and helpful. And then, it was time to move on. It was time to be like, “Okay, well now I want to do my own thing.” But I don’t know if I would’ve… He’s just a huge part of my story and my parents are, too. There’s just no way around it.
Debbie Millman:
You write about how you also had the opportunity to audition as a backup singer for Leonard Cohen. And this was something you had dreamed of since you were a little girl. You had met him when you were very little. In the end, you decided not to take the job. How come?
Martha Wainwright:
Well, I didn’t audition, so I can’t say that I think I would’ve gotten the job or I could have gotten the job. So I was a huge, and still am, Leonard fan as a young person, as a 14, 15-year-old. I got obsessed and went to go see him play in Montreal. And just the dynamic that he had with his backup singers always. They played such a huge role, which I think was why I felt so comfortable singing with Rufus and playing a big role because they are really present, his singers. So that was like, “Wow, what a great job. That’s what I want to do. That’s the job that I want.” And I knew a lot of the songs. And so when he was putting together the band for his comeback world takeover, which was so amazing, I was hanging out with his daughter because we were really close friends and she said, “Oh, well…”
And I had met Leonard a bunch of times. He had been to my shows, we knew each other. He was a really big fan. She’s like, “You got to go do the audition. You’re totally going to get the part. It’s perfect. We’ll be on the road together. It’s going to be really fun.” We were like, this is a good plan. But right at that time, I had already made I think two records, my career was taking off, and I realized that that’s not what I wanted to do, even though it’s a great job. But it’s not what I wanted to do.
Debbie Millman:
You state that you don’t really hear music in your head and you don’t go around jotting down bits of lyrics on scraps of paper. How do you go about writing a song?
Martha Wainwright:
God, I can’t remember. You’re making me nervous because it’s been a while. I’ve been working so hard. I’ve been touring a lot and promoting the book as well, and I have two kids, and so it’s been a busy time. I haven’t sat down to-
Debbie Millman:
We’ll talk about the magnificence of Love Will Be Reborn in a few moments and about the most recent songs.
Martha Wainwright:
Yes. So I haven’t had a chance in the last year and I have to start writing songs. But generally what happens, or what has happened in the past over the last almost 30 years, is I get so upset and riled up and kind of like buzzing almost because I haven’t been writing or whatever the reason is that life is stored up in me. And then I start, just with the guitar on the couch, start with some chords usually. And then maybe a line will come, or two lines, a phrase. Just things that are like a hook phrase that seem poetic, that seem like there’s a lot in them where you can go, and that are really a direct reflection of how I’m feeling or what’s going on.
And so usually I can identify pretty quickly, “Oh, okay, I’m saying this or I’m writing this because this is how I’m feeling because such and such thing happened last week.” And then that helps me to then compose the song. And when I can go deeper into that and use examples of daily life, usually, to illustrate it. Or people or relationships. A lot of the songs are about love and falling in love, falling out of love, being in love with people who aren’t in love with you. And then, of course, that gets transferred to children and to friendships.
Debbie Millman:
You state that you write maybe five songs in a good year. Do you write a song until you think it’s good or do you write a lot of rejected songs? What is the way in which the songs end up on an album?
Martha Wainwright:
Well, I think that most of them are kept. Sometimes I’ll combine, if I have some cool chords in a melody that I like and I’m working on two separate things, and then I realize that they’re not fully formed things, I’ll say, “Okay, well maybe I can use that as a section or something. Or maybe I can add to it.” Some songs are written quicker than others or easier, and other ones are toiled over for a long time and I write five songs a year or something like that.
But I also find that there seems to be three or four or five maybe different ways of doing it. There’s certain songs, and all songwriters are like this, I think, they have songs that are similar sounding. They have, that’s a set of songs that sound sort of a… And then they have another type of songwriting where those are kind of similar, and it’s not that they’re writing the same song over and over, but there is an element of that, too. I think that that’s also comforting to the listener. Someone turns on, whether it’s Bruce Springsteen or somebody who has a real sound, Neil Young or whatever, they want to hear that sound.
Debbie Millman:
You talk about how you’ve walked away from commercial opportunities because you’re hardheaded and want to do things your own way and go on to state that the truth is, for the last 25 years, you’ve made and played music and gotten good at it. The overall goal is to enjoy playing, but also to get to do it in front of millions of people. Most musicians want this, but the reality is more difficult and complicated. Recognition is essential for the ego, but you don’t need recognition to play music. After all, it’s a natural expression that has been commodified to produce a financial benefit. Martha, I’m wondering how hard is it to straddle the continuum of commodification versus poverty versus artistry?
Martha Wainwright:
In my case, the reasons for making music have changed over time, which is kind of great because it keeps it fresh. There’s always a love to make music, and obviously, it’s the only thing that I know how to do at this point. So I can’t have any other real skills for me to be able to have another profession. It would be really hard to start again at something. But certainly now, having two kids and being the sole money maker and the responsibility of that, working becomes really, truly a necessity, like it is for everybody. That’s not how I felt about it when I was in my twenties. I enjoyed making money and spending the money, but now the money has taken on another type of importance, which is to create something that I can leave behind for the kids, mainly. And also where I can work enough, I make enough money so that I don’t always have to work because then I can be with the kids and take care of them because they’re in school and they can’t go on the road and things like that.
So that for me, at this stage in my life is a really big, big part of it. That being said, I just got back from a tour yesterday. I was in Norway and Sweden for a week. The week before I was with my kids in Montreal. The week before that I was in Holland for a week. I do week on, week off. When I’m there, playing to however many people it is, whether it’s a hundred people or a thousand people, it is the same as it always was, in terms of hoping that people come, hoping that people like it, wanting to give them a great 90 minutes, wanting to sing as well as possible, trying to achieve on stage.
Also, some magic. Sometimes there’s magic, sometimes there isn’t magic. But if there is no magic that there has to be, it has to seem like there is. And that’s really important so that it’s always good. And sometimes you think, as a performer, you think either it’s magic and it’s not as magical as the night before when you thought it wasn’t magic. You’re not in control of the same thing. But I guess what I’m saying is that even though the motives have changed a little bit, there’s always been the same person there doing the same instinct in me to do it.
Debbie Millman:
Last year, you released a new album titled Love Will Be Reborn. Critics have declared this album to be the very best of your career to date, which is saying a lot. I read that you wrote the title track in a very dark time. But the positivity and luminosity of Love Will Be Reborn, in many ways, has predicted your future. Despite how long it might take you to write songs is true that you wrote, love will be Reborn in 10 minutes?
Martha Wainwright:
Pretty much. It was really quick. It just flew out of me. I’m really hoping that that happens again, because I hadn’t written the song in a while, either. And there was a lot going on that was really dark. I’d started divorce proceedings, which quickly got really scary. And I was really scared and I was out on the road without the kids and feeling like, “Oh, my God.”
I was promoting the last record, a record called Goodnight City, and just really afraid. And then as you said, it was so surprising that this thing just flew out of me that was very positive and I just really took it as almost like a prayer. I’m not religious, but it felt like something to hold onto, like “Well, maybe if I keep saying this and saying this good thing and sort of believing this thing that things will get better.”
And that did happen. And the song is not about a man, but it’s about love in general, with everybody. But loved did come back into my life with a man, which was really surprising. And then just wanting peace and hopefully achieving peace, obviously with the father of my children would be, really, the best possible outcome. So it came quickly and I was really happy to know that that meant that there’s things that we’re not even in control of that are just in there. That was a relief.
Debbie Millman:
You start the album with a really, really ferocious song, Middle of the Lake, which felt a bit like a departure for you and in an arrival in a new place, musically. Can you talk a little bit about the way in which you used howling and screaming to amplify that song? It’s such a great song.
Martha Wainwright:
Thank you so much. Well, that was definitely, I put that the song first because it’s different than a lot of the rest of the record. And it was the last song that I actually wrote for that record. And it does have a lot of sonic… I’m singing in these different ways and I’m singing high and low and yelling and Whispering, and I’m singing the backup parts, so there’s a lot of me in there, but it’s kind of a different me.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, for the first time, I felt like, “Huh, Martha maybe was influenced a little bit by Kate Bush in this.”
Martha Wainwright:
Yeah. Well, of course I am influenced by Kate Bush, not so obviously by [inaudible 00:39:48]
Debbie Millman:
No, not at all.
Martha Wainwright:
And adored her music. I’m influenced by the McGarrigles, and I know that she was influenced by the McGarrigles, but letting the female voice really dance wildly in a way that’s just so powerful, which I think that is what the female voice has been doing forever. It’s like, totally… I don’t know if it’s witchy, I don’t really know what that word really means. But just allowing that kind of total, unbridled, uncontrolled female self be there. And it’s not coquettish or intentionally sexy or for the purpose of attracting men. It seems more on its own, more natural, and with nature as well.
Debbie Millman:
So interesting. I think it’s one of your sexiest songs, actually. In thinking about it. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, there’s a Kate Bush-ness to it. There’s a Bjork-ness to it. There’s a very much a Martha Wainwright-ness to it. It felt like listening to that song, especially, it’s the opening, that you had reached a whole new level of your artistry. And then you bring in Report Card after it. And I was like, “Okay, I need a day off.”
Martha Wainwright:
Yeah, no, that song I think is really intense, too. No, I’m going to agree with the critics and say that this is my best record, because like the first record, it came out of a long time in the making and a lot of things having happened and a lot of pivotal things happening. And the first record is really about… It’s like revving up. But this record, to me, seems about really understanding and taking control. Also rejecting some of the things through my past that have been not helpful and difficult and unnecessary. So a real rebirth and a better second half to life than first half, possibly. And I think that that’s the theme of the record and also the book.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, you state that at the end, that you’re about hopefully half only halfway through. Talk about Report Card. It’s a long song, for you. It’s quiet. It’s heartbreaking. I think it may be the saddest song you’ve ever written. What motivated it?
Martha Wainwright:
The saddest thing that I’ve ever dealt with, sadder than losing a boyfriend or losing my mother or anything that I had ever experienced, which was to not be able to see my kids and know where they are and be with them and to have access to them, which was to me the hardest part of my separation and divorce. And that just totally shook me. And it’s not that it’s unfair. Life is not fair. So it’s not unjust, but it seemed to have strike in me a lot of pain. And I think with Report Card, it was hard because I had always, as a songwriter, spoken very openly about my feelings and people and bloody mother-ing asshole and always open, open, open. But then when you have kids, you can’t do that. I can’t be like, “Your dad…”
A bunch of stuff is off-limits, which I learned through writing the book, too. You don’t really want to say everything. And especially not when it comes to people that the kids care about and it’s not worth it. That being said, I was in so much pain, I needed to say something. I needed to be able to express something. But I knew it was pointless to have it be angry or to have it be blaming. And I didn’t want to write another song about their dad and I just had to find a way to talk about what I was feeling, just being alone in the house and being without them, and how scary that was and how it really is my Achilles heel. It really got me, that thing. And it still does. So I had to say it. I had to give myself the right to say it. And I was so sad and I get so sad. And the song had to match the sadness.
Debbie Millman:
You write in your memoir, when you go back and listen to your older records, you regret that most people will never hear them or know anything about you and your work. As you’re back on the road now touring, sharing this new album, sharing your memoir, do you have the same worries?
Martha Wainwright:
No. I do feel like this last year or two years, now that the record is out, I’ve been able to reconnect with fans and people. And that is the flip side to also what I think a lot of women, in particular, do when they get divorced and they don’t necessarily have custody of their kids all the time, is they throw themselves into work. Because you’re like, “Well, if I can’t be taking care of my kids and I’m not with them, then I have to be doing something else and I have to…”
So that has afforded me the possibility to work, which has been great. And has reminded me of A, that I got to keep out there working because if I don’t go back to Oslo and go back to Amsterdam and go back to all these places, I will be forgotten. You have to. It’s a train, you got to keep it going, you got to keep feeding it, and I need to continue for as long as I can. There’s no pension in the music business. And also I have a healthy competition with other people in my field, including my family. My dad’s still working.
Debbie Millman:
I know.
Martha Wainwright:
For God’s sake, he’ll never stop working. When I get off the phone with him, I’m like, “God, he did six shows this week? He’s 76 years old.” I’m like, “I need to book more shows.”
Debbie Millman:
Martha, I have one last question for you today you conclude your memoir with the story of meeting a new love and the glorious process of falling in love. How has that changed you? How has that influenced your music?
Martha Wainwright:
On the record, we hear at least three, if not four songs about Nico. And there were quite positive and I think exciting and really good songs, too. So that was really inspiring for songwriting, certainly. And it was great that the whole record was not going to be about a difficult divorce and my sadness that all of a sudden, no, that’s not what’s happening here. What’s also happening here is a sort of new beginning that was really unexpected and really welcome.
And I think that also, when you read the book and listen to a lot of my music from the last 20 years, there is this kind of feeling of I’m not good enough, or wanting to be loved by men and wanting to be more beautiful and wanting to be more perfect and wanting men to like me, and this sort of insecurity there that, I have to say, for the first time, has been completely turned on its head. And being loved by a man in a way that is kind and loving and generous. And I’m really glad that that’s happened because it feels good.
Debbie Millman:
Martha Wainwright, thank you so much for making so much work that matters, and thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.
Martha Wainwright:
Thank you.
Debbie Millman:
Martha Wainwright’s memoir is titled Stories I Might Regret Telling You, and it is out now in both hard cover and paperback. Her latest album is titled Love Will Be Reborn. You can find all her music and see lots more about Martha on her website, MarthaWainwright.com. This is the 18th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I want to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we could make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman and I look forward to talking with you again soon.