Everything’s joy in heaven
And it’s so good to live in this world of ours.
PJ Harvey has a walloping, 50-f oot-t all legacy — musicially and emotionally raw when stadium angst was a boys club; opening the door for everyone from Alanis to Karen O. But in 1993, PJ Harvey was the name of a band: bassist Steve Vaughan, drummer Rob Ellis, and frontwoman Polly Jean Harvey, who would soon after come to be known as “PJ Harvey” regardless of whom she played with. Rid of Me was their second album, coming on the heels of their stark, remarkable 1992 debut, Dry, which had launched the trio from their modest beginnings playing forgettable gigs around England’s West Country (including one where they were famously paid to stop playing) into a major label bidding war (won by Island Records) and on to an international stage. A howling smashu p of blues, punk, and Beefheartian avantg arde stomp, Rid of Me felt like an expression of pure, unadulterated id — albeit an id with defiant
post feminist ideals and a sneaky sense of humor. Many heard the embittered snarl of the title track or the unhinged and anarchic “Legs” as autobiographical soundtracks to the nervous breakdown Harvey supposedly had during the album’s conception, but that sold her short as a writer. Rid of Me spawned no breakaway radio hits and garnered minimal MTV play, but tracks like the frenetic, thrashing “50 Ft. Queenie” and the harrowing howler, “ManS ize,” made quite an impact nonetheless — SPIN named it the fourth best album of 1993 and put her on the cover two years later. In the album’s wake, Courtney Love said, “The one rock star that makes me know I’m shit is Polly Harvey. I’m nothing next to the purity that she experiences.” The controversy only seemed to gild the album’s legend, though, and with time it has become a definitive document of the 1990s.
Breathing the clean air through my nose
It’s an endless experience. I remember starting to write in a flat I was living in, a horrible, horrible little flat that I was sharing in Tottenham. Tottenham is quite a rough area in London. We were living in a very damp flat with gas heaters, and I had a poky little room at the front of the house. In order to access any of the rest of the house you had to walk through my room. We were on the lower floor, so the people up above us would make noise. I remember starting to write the song “Rid of Me,” sitting on my bed in my damp front room by the gas heater. When I’m writing towards a record, there’s often one song that emerges as the lynchpin. At that time, I very much wanted to write songs that shocked. When I was at art college, all I wanted to do was shock with my artwork. When I wrote “Rid of Me,” I shocked myself. I thought, ‘Well, if I’m shocked, other people might be shocked.” The sound of the words was powerful, and the rhythm felt clean and simple to roll off the tongue. I knew that this was the type of song I was trying to write. I can never get back to what that first album was like because then you’re writing purely because you need to. You’re bursting with energy. Inevitably, if you’ve had any degree of interest, you know that people are going to be waiting for that next piece of work. I was very aware of that. But I can’t say it really hindered my writing. I found writing Rid of Me very free flowing. Ideas came quickly. That whole period of my life was such a huge change. Success came to me very quickly and I was very young. I did reach a point where everything was just too much for me to cope with. That’s when I sort of put the brakes on for a bit and said, “Hang on, I’m going to stop touring. I want to go to the country.” I ended up in this fishing village to just write songs, and sort of regroup myself and have a bit of down time. It was in Dorset on the Jurassic Coast. I moved to a flat that was right by the sea, the English Channel. It had a wonderful view. It was above a restaurant. I knew the restaurant owner and he was letting me rent this flat at a good price. In return, they could use my spare room for wine bottles. It worked out well. I’d help myself to the food bar, and then they’d get the wine bottles as they needed them. It was a wonderful space to write in. If I listen to the demos of Rid of Me now, I hear that room so clearly. I remember everything about the room: The way it smelled and looked, and the view from the windows.
I think the view from your window when you’re writing really does inform what you’re writing about quite a lot. I need to stare out of a window whilst I’m writing. That helps me find where I’m going. I was by the harbor, so I could see people coming and going in boats, and I could look out at the sea. There was a fun fair that would pitch up in a field to the right of the restaurant every June, so for a while, I had a fun fair outside my window. I’m sure that contributed in some way to Rid of Me. There was a wonderful collection of furniture and also Russian vinyl 78s. The restaurant owner’s mother had lived there previously — she was Russian — and it was all her furniture and things. Not so long ago, I borrowed the Russian 78s back off the restaurateur so I could record them, because they’d been so much in my memory. I used a sample of one of them on the 4Track Demos [on “Hook”]. At the time I was listening almost exclusively to those Russian 78s, along with Howlin’ Wolf, Tom Waits, and the Pixies. I’d also been reading a lot of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories, and J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey. I might’ve also been reading Thus Spake Zarathustra. Some light reading. It was a wonderful period of time because I did suddenly have my life back again. That was the period when I was really writing the record. I’d have a little notebook of odd phrases, maybe a couple of lines here and there that I liked, and then I would really improvise. I would play my instrument — I was largely working on guitar and keyboards at that time, although I’d also just bought a cello, so I was playing a bit of cello — and I would almost scats ing the words that I jotted down. The different stories within the songs, that was more just interests, as I was reading books and letting my imagination run wild, looking out the windows. “Rub Til It Bleeds” was quite a difficult song for me because it took me a long time to get the timing of the pauses right. There are a lot of pauses and it keeps building to a crescendo at the end of each verse. Then when it hits the chorus, it has to explode. That was very hard to get that feel right. I had just come out of my teens and at that time you really want to make your mark on the world. So I just wanted to say something that hadn’t been said in that way before. I suppose that I was just trying to cause a riot in one way or another.
Where I can go for a walk, Where I can do what I please. Where I can go for a walk, Where I can say what I please, Without getting picke up by the police.
Where I can release the tension With the pushing of a button.
She picked the apple and gave it to him.
Did she know what she was doing?
I remember starting to write in a flat I was living in, a horrible, horrible little flat that I was sharing in Tottenham. Tottenham is quite a rough area in London. We were living in a very damp flat with gas heaters, and I had a poky little room at the front of the house. In order to access any of the rest of the house you had to walk through my room. We were on the lower floor, so the people up above us would make noise. I remember starting to write the song “Rid of Me,” sitting on my bed in my damp front room by the gas heater. When I’m writing towards a record, there’s often one song that emerges as the lynchpin. At that time, I very much wanted to write songs that shocked. When I was at art college, all I wanted to do was shock with my artwork. When I wrote “Rid of Me,” I shocked myself. I thought, ‘Well, if I’m shocked, other people might be shocked.”
The sound of the words was powerful, and the rhythm felt clean and simple to roll off the tongue. I knew that this was the type of song I was trying to write. I can never get back to what that first album was like because then you’re writing purely because you need to. You’re bursting with energy. Inevitably, if you’ve had any degree of interest, you know that people are going to be waiting for that next piece of work. I was very aware of that. But I can’t say it really hindered my writing. I found writing Rid of Me very free flowing. Ideas came quickly. That whole period of my life was such a huge change. Success came to me very quickly and I was very young. I did reach a point where everything was just too much for me to cope with. That’s when I sort of put the brakes on for a bit.
by Madison Lyons