CONSEQUENCES BE
DAMNED!
It’s all love on Brit-powerhouse Joan Armatrading’s latest album. Making 70 sound like the new 35, Armatrading’s album is a pandemic tonic By Meg Crawford
W
ith a title like Consequences, you might expect living-legend Joan Armatrading’s 20th album to be laden with heavy topics. It’s not. Fundamentally, Consequences is about love, ranging from the headiness of falling head over (‘Glorious Madness’) to patient, abiding love (‘Already There’). With lyrics like “while you were falling in love, I was already there”, the album’s destined to slay romantics. Which is true to form. Love has been Armatrading’s topic in trade ever since her debut 1972 album, Whatever’s For Us. “Love is it really – it’s been my theme from day one of writing,” Armatrading says. “I think it’s the case for me and a lot of other songwriters, but love is why we’re here. We’re on this planet to eat bread with people. Yeah, we love nature, we love the trees and the flowers and the different seasons and we love buildings and architecture, but we don’t love them in the same way we love people. We can’t communicate with them in the way that we can communicate with people. We’re here to communicate, to care for, to love, to treasure. Every generation that comes along, that’s what they’re looking for. You see a little child wants the love of its mother, a teenager wants a love of his friends, a grown up wants the love of a partner. The world spins on this.” Given the heartfelt nature of Armatrading’s songs, it’s tempting to assume they’re confessional. They’re not. For instance, ‘To Anyone Who Will Listen’ is categorically not a songwriter’s plea. Rather, it was prompted by a newspaper article about a man experiencing depression. Again, on form. Armatrading has always been fiercely private. We know that she’s married to artist Maggie Butler, lives in Surrey where she owns and operates her own recording studio, Bumpkin Records, but not too much else on a personal note. Something else that shouldn’t come as a surprise is the fact that Consequences is all Armatrading – go to whoa. “It seems strange to people, but it’s what I’ve been doing for years,” she explains. “People just don’t realise that. My first album came out in 1972, and I started producing myself in 1986, and I’ve been producing myself ever since. But even the albums before that – even though I didn’t get a production credit – I was producing those with the producer, and I’ve always written my own songs. To me, it’s not a huge undertaking. When I do my demos, I play everything myself anyway, so, I knew at some point I would do that on a record. Then, I decided in 2003 that this was the time and from then on, that’s what’s happened. On a couple of the albums, I’ve had a drummer, but then I decided, ‘Well, I’ll just program drums’. But everything else you hear, it’s me.” But then, Armatrading’s always done it her own way. Black, female, gay – Armatrading never compromised. Early days, a label executive made the error of suggesting that Armatrading should change her name and image – she never wore makeup and was happy wearing jeans onstage. Armatrading stood her ground. It paid off – she became the first Black British woman to make it in the US. How did she come to be so staunchly authentic? Armatrading makes it sound as easy as breathing. “Because that’s how I am,” she notes. “I don’t know any other way. I didn’t need to learn to be this, this is me. It’s very easy to not have somebody say, ‘be something else’, because I don’t know what that something else is. I have no experience about something else.” Another point of distinction is that not once in her celebrated career has Armatrading ever experienced writer’s block. Is there a writer’s ritual or practice to shore it up? Nope, but there is one rule. “If I start a song, I must finish it. Good, bad or indifferent, I must finish. That’s the only thing I do. Otherwise, I wait for the muse. If I write for six months and I don’t write for a year, it doesn’t bother me. I don’t think, ‘Oh no, I need to write’, because I know how it works. One day, I’ll just think again, ‘I’ve got to write’ and then I’m writing, writing, writing, writing. When that’s finished I just wait. It’s almost like eating. You eat, you feel full, you stop eating, you’re satisfied. Then, I just wait for the next meal.” 29
