Laurie Anderson

About Laurie Anderson

In 1981, Laurie Anderson released a single on a small independent label, 110 Records: "O Superman." The single became an unexpected hit in Britain (reaching #2 in the charts) and introduced the mainstream music audience to Anderson's unique perspective on the modern world. Now, twenty years later, and seven years after the release of her last album of new material, comes Life On A String, a record on which Anderson turns her view inward.

Underlying Life On A String’s journey through the Garden of Eden, is a pervasive sense of loss and the inability to make a real connection at a time when our means of communication have never been more prolific. Musically, Anderson has drawn heavily on the emotive power of strings, including a rare instrumental, "Here With You." "It's the first time I've played violin on a record since my first album Big Science" she says. "It was great fun to work with other string players and it’s really the album's predominant sound."

The album's intensity is heightened by its spare sound. "My main exercise in this record was taking things out," she explains. "I would tell myself: 'You don't need that, take that out, take this out,' until it was pretty stripped down. I really wanted to have more air in it."

Life On A String’s roots lie in her Songs and Stories of Moby Dick. The show, which premiered in 1999, was a lavish multi-media adaptation/ reinterpretation of Melville's classic story of obsession. But the planned creation of a Moby Dick album changed during the recording process. “It had been quite a project turning a book into a show. And hard as I tried I just couldn't turn the show into a record." Anderson says. "I'm completely in love with Melville’s book, but by the time the show was over I was so sick of these smelly old sailors and their problems! I thought, 'I can't be in the 19th century another second!' So I started again. I wanted this record to be more about my own experience, my own life.'"

Anderson composed all the album's songs, co-writing "My Compensation" with bassist Skúli Sverrisson, a veteran of Moby Dick who also served as the album's music director. Bill Frisell, Lou Reed, and Van Dyke Parks are among the other musicians who make an appearance, while Hal Willner (Marianne Faithfull, Lou Reed) worked with Anderson as co-producer. "Hal's just a fantastic person to work with," she says. "He'd never say he didn't like something. But he would say, 'Ahh... I don't know, I'd have another look at that one,' and I'd know he meant, 'Throw it away.' Plus he had so many suggestions for musicians that I just wouldn't have thought of."

"I feel like I'm there in it, which is not something I always feel about my records," Anderson concludes about her latest work. "It is dark. It's really dark. But I'm glad about that, because there are plenty of cheerful songs around. I was talking to Julian Schnabel, who directed Before Night Falls. He was telling me about his reasons for doing the movie and he said, 'What I'm interested in is loneliness and death. Those are things that really interest me and that's why I made this.' And it suddenly snapped into focus for me. I thought, 'That's what this record is about.' But I hadn't had the courage to say it. Because that's not something you usually say when you want people to listen to your music. Anyway, I did try to make the language plain and observational. I tried to be simple. Just say what I saw."

By Gillian Garr, 2001