For Suzanne Vega, a summing-up period
by Seth Rogovoy

(LENOX, Mass., May 7, 1999) - On the eve of her 40th birthday, Suzanne Vega finds herself at a crossroads. One way is familiar, a road that heads backwards in time, and which is summarized in Vega's two most recent projects, a retrospective album and a book of her collected writings just published in February.

The other way, the road ahead, is less clearly delineated, as Vega's life has been a whirlwind of change in the past year. Her record label, A&M, was shut down as a result of the mega-merger of Universal and Polygram. She sold her house and moved. She doesn't have a manager any more. And she recently split up with her husband, Mitchell Froom, who is the father of their daughter, the 41/2-year-old Ruby, and who was also the producer of Vega's last two, critically-acclaimed albums.

"I'm kind of reconstructing everything from the ground up," said Vega in a recent phone interview. "So it's a little turbulent, but at the same time I feel there's a lot of support, and I'm hoping to write some new things in the fall and make a new album next year."

In the meantime, Vega has been getting out in front of the public and performing in a duo setting with just herself on acoustic guitar accompanied by her long-time bassist, Mike Visceglia. This will be the format for her concert on Saturday night, May 8, at 8 at the Berkshire Performing Arts Theater, part of the National Music Foundation's Berkshire Music Festival. Boston Music Award nominee Robby Baier, of Housatonic, will warm up the crowd for Vega. For more information call 637-1800.

With her book, "The Passionate Eye: The Collected Writing of Suzanne Vega" (Spike/Avon), and her album, "Tried and True: The Best of Suzanne Vega," it's obvious that Vega is in the midst of what she calls "a summing-up period."

"I'm going to be forty this year," she said. "It seems like a good time to look back."

In her book, Vega looks back all the way to when she was a juvenile poet. The poem "By Myself," written when she was nine, already anticipates some of the themes and imagery that Vega would later use in poem-songs such as "Solitude Standing." The book includes several examples of Vega's early poetry, in addition to song lyrics, journal entries, essays and interviews.

One piece, "Fighting with Boys," is a remarkably detailed manual on the topic. Far from her image as a delicate waif, the short essay reveals Vega to be well-versed in urban street survival. Key rules include go for the biggest one, defend what's yours, always aim for the face and the stomach, and never back down.

Also included are a long piece about what it's like to be the subject of a fashion-photography shoot, and the transcript of a bizarre interview with Vega conducted by Leonard Cohen, the poet and singer-songwriter to whom Vega has perhaps most often been compared.

The interview, said Vega, was "harrowing," because Cohen seemed intent on "revealing me in a way I'd never been revealed before, and I was like, no buddy, you're not going to."

In reviewing the material for the book, Vega noticed certain themes emerging in her work that she hadn't noticed previously. "Certain images repeat themselves in a way I hadn't thought about or expected," she said. These include images of a crowd of people who stand and judge, and images of a man with his mouth open, singing or yelling or just with his mouth open and no sound coming out. Vega said it was surprising to see these images keep coming back and show themselves in the different things she has done in her life.

Vega grew up in New York City, where she studied dance at the High School of Performing Arts. While at Barnard College, she began performing in Greenwich Village folk clubs and gradually worked her way up the then-thriving New York folk scene. Signed to A&M Records, she released her first album in 1985. Her second album, which contained the top 10 hit "Luka" --written from the viewpoint of an abused child and accompanied by a groundbreaking, award-winning video -- came out two years later and garnered her the first of two Grammy nominations.

Since that time, Vega has recorded three subsequent albums, contributed to several movie soundtracks including "Pretty in Pink" and "Dead Man Walking," and collaborated with such artists as Philip Glass, David Bowie, Elton John the Grateful Dead and Joe Jackson. For the last two summers she has been part of the all-female, Lilith Fair concert tour.

In selecting and sequencing the songs for her "best-of" album, Vega wanted to do more than just offer CD buyers a convenient way to purchase some of her best-known and best-loved songs, including "Luka," "Marlene on the Wall" and "Tom's Diner."

On "Tried and True," Vega wanted to present a selection of her material in a new light and a new context. Vega explains, "People have argued that I began as a kind of true folksinger and that I somehow evolved into some kind of techno-folkie - that the last two albums were a wild deviation from what came before.

"I really don't think that's true at all. So what I wanted to do was present the songs in a new way, shuffle together different eras so people could see that they really did belong side by side. Even the stuff off the first album is really not the pure folk of people's memories and that they're nostalgic about."

The CD, which includes songs from her five albums as well as a few numbers that originally came out on movie soundtracks or that were previously unreleased, is currently only available as an import. It has been released everywhere in the world except the U.S. Vega hopes that it will be released in the fall by Interscope Records, a Unigram label which survived the merger and which has taken on some of the artists who formerly were contracted to A&M.

The biggest change in Vega's life, however, has been her daughter Ruby. Motherhood has changed Vega's priorities.

"Her needs come first," she said. "So that means my touring life is very limited. If I can do a show like this one where I can leave New York and go to the show and come back within a reasonable amount of time, then I can do that. But the big, rock 'n' roll, year-long tours are going to be a lot fewer. I don't really feel comfortable dragging her around, doing that anymore.

"Also, on a daily basis, I get up with her in the morning. I take her to school. Which means I wedge in the songwriting wherever I can, and when an idea comes I have to really be ready to grab it as it floats by. I don't have the concentrated time that I used to have."

The one thing Vega hopes to change in the future is people's image of her as a depressive, humorless waif. "That's people's greatest misconception, that I have no sense of humor. That I'm very serious and sad all the time. That I just sit and look out the window reading poetry."

You mean that's not true?

Vega laughs and says, "No, not all the time. Yes, there's probably a side of me that is very much like that, but the every-day side is a lot more practical and reality-based than I would seem from the photographs and the interviews. I'm more practical than people would guess."

Coming from the author of "Fighting with Boys," who's going to argue with that?

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[This article originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on May 8, 1999. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1999. All rights reserved.]