HIPS. TITS. LIPS. POWER.

Interview by Adrian Deevoy

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Photography by John Stoddart

Credits to Gideon Overhead

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HIPS. TITS. LIPS. POWER.

THE ELFIN ESKIMO, THE KOOKY American chick and the

mad bitch woman from hell are drinking tea and

talking about other people's perceptions of them

and how wrong they always seem to be.

  Gathered around a low table in a photographic

studio in Islington, North London, they make for

gently intense yet engaging company. Soon, the

conversation is taking the unlikely B-roads hinted

at in their expressly non-linear music. It is punctu-

ated at regular intervals by staccato bursts of

manic laughter. If Andrew Lloyd Webber were

ever to make Macbeth The Musical!! (The

Scottish Play as you've never heard it before, star-

ring Nick Cave and Sarah Brightman) he'd need

look no further for his three witches.

  As they talk, parts of their characters begin to

emerge: Polly Harvey is a cautious cove, quietly

looking on and rolling her own cigarettes, follow-

ing rather than leading the proceedings; Björk is a

more abstract customer, immediately giving voice

to her more random thoughts and pursuing the

unlikeliest of tangents; Tori Amos's off-centre

broadsides come in elliptical form, often stopping

off for a spot of free association and shrinkspeak

en route back to her original point.

  With five LPs between them (two unsettling

albums apiece for Polly and Tori and one half-mil-

lion UK seller for Björk's startling Debut), they

have given spooky, left-field major label weird-

ness back its good name and everyone from Kate

Bush to Evan Dando a run for their money.

  But what sets these women apart from the

mainstream soft soul of Mariah Carey and Dina

Carroll is their extraordinary singing voices.

Björk's is a heavenly hiccuping thing that almost

defies terrestrial description; Polly's is as if an

opera diva had eaten a drum kit - swooping and

percussive - and Tori's is a finely tutored instru-

ment that manages to simultaneously preach, purr

and plead.

  Their speaking voices are no less unusual:

Björk boasts a yodelling Cockney Icelandic hybrid

with occasional East European overtones (that

old one); Polly has the soft Rs and sleepily

stretched vowels of her native Dorset, while Tori

possesses a dreamy mid-American accent which,

of the trio, bears the closest resemblance to that

which you hear on her records.

  All three have met before, most poignantly at

this year's Brit Awards where Björk collected a

brace of gongs and performed Satisfaction with

Polly. Seeking refuge from the corporate back

slapathon, Tori sought out her fellow female

singers backstage, harbouring the suspicion that

they might be soul mates. She was, she maintains

proudly, correct.



                  * * * * *



Q: Do you feel a connection between the three of

you?

POLLY: I think there is a connection. For me any-

way. This is the first time I've really had the oppor-

tunity to meet other women that are in the same

kind of situation that I'm in. It's been really help-

ful for me to see that other people have to deal

with exactly the same sort of things that I have to

deal with. I was feeling on my own. I was thinking

that other people don't have to go through these

things, seeing lawyers, getting sued left, right and

centre while you're trying to write an album.

BJÖRK: Are you being sued as well?

POLLY: Yeah, I'm being sued at the moment. It's

really horrible.

BJÖRK: I'm so sorry for you.

TORI: Do you want us to shoot the lawyer?

POLLY: But meeting up with these two has stopped

me feeling so sorry for myself. It's just living and

everyone has to deal with these kinds of things in

their different ways.



Q: You've met before, haven't you?

BJÖRK: Me and Tori met in Iceland.

TORI: She came backstage to see me at my show

two years ago. I had been aware of her because of

The Sugarcubes and I went to Iceland because I

wanted to go so bad. I'd been fascinated by it and

studied a bit about it so I eventually went.

Everybody, like, gets drunk, don't they?

BJÖRK: That's Icelandic culture. That's all there is

really.

TORI: It's the most expensive place to buy alcohol

on the planet.

BJÖRK: It's a joke. One beer costs about five quid.

TORI: But they were a really good audience for a

country that's drunk.

BJÖRK: But that was the way you kept the concen-

tration going. It was amazing. I've done gigs in

Iceland that have been ridiculous because people

know you and when you're singing, they're shout-

ing, Hey, you didn't make your English degree!

Your uncle is fucking my niece!

TORI: They could have shouted that at me and it

would probably have been true. But we went

snow-mobiling on the glacier. Polly, you should go

there, you'd love it.

POLLY: I've never been. In my head I just see snow

and cold.

TORI: There aren't many trees but it's very green.

And it's icy in Greenland. They got the names

wrong.

POLLY: Is it hilly or flat?

BJÖRK: It's very hilly. Geographically, it's very

young, so it's still in the making. It's not got to the

tree stage yet. It's still making moss.

TORI: It's a very unique place. It makes sense that

Björk comes from there.



Q: What were your impressions of each other

before you met?

TORI: Total respect for them.

BJÖRK: This might sound really arrogant, I don't

know, but when it comes to people who make

music, I'm not very interested in most cases. That

doesn't mean I think they're bad, they just don't

do anything for me. But I could tell very quickly

when I heard Polly's album and Tori's album that

I'd like them. When I met Polly, it was really

relaxed and I have to say that she was like I

expected her to be.



Q: Were you anxious about meeting each other?

POLLY: I wasn't really. As soon as we met it was

very easy.

BJÖRK: You can suss some people out pretty

quickly. Not completely, obviously, but you can

sense whether or not you're on the same wave-

length.



Q: Do you, or have you ever, felt in competition

with each other?

BJÖRK: No way.

POLLY: No.

TORI: Never. It's funny for women because jour-

nalists pit women against each other. If you think

about Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton

they were all much more similar to each other than

we are. We have tits. We have three holes. That's

what we have in common. We don't even play the

same instruments. It really disappoints me when

some sort of competition has to be manufactured

for their little minds and fantasies. That's not

growing, that's not support. There is room for

everybody on the planet to be creative and con-

scious if you are your own person. If you're trying

to be like somebody else, then there isn't. We see

things from different points of view and that

affects people in different ways and I think that

should be encouraged. It shouldn't be like, Two

tits too many. Like with radio in America, they tell

you, Well, we're already playing one female this

week. They wouldn't think about that with guys.



Q: In the last 18 months, you have all felt the pres-

sures of success at full tilt. How have you, in your

own ways, coped or not coped?

BJÖRK: I guess I was lucky in that I became a pub-

lic property in Iceland when I was 11, so I had 15

years of hardcore rehearsals before all this hulla-

baloo. I guess at the end of the day what you

realise is that this hullabaloo is not about you, it's

about that person you've created. It sounds cold

and horrible but you feel very lucky that the per-

son that you are - the relationship you've got

between you and yourself - is different than with

some person who's never met you. It's good to

have that distance, because when you get Brit

Awards and front covers, it's not about you, it's a

symbol for what you do. And when it comes to

what I do, it's got so little to do with myself. I'm

writing songs about other people, my favourite

things, whatever, and it's the most unselfish thing

you can imagine.



Q: Do you agree with that, Tori and Polly? Your

songs, ostensibly, seem to be more about first-

hand personal experience?

POLLY: No, I definitely agree with what Björk was

saying. I'm just growing to realise that it's not you

when you see your picture in the paper. I can now

see that it's something completely removed from

what I am.



Q: You had some problems with that, didn't you?

POLLY: Yeah, because I couldn't remove myself

and I found it very difficult. Anything that I read

would really upset me. Or I wouldn't realise at the

time and then later on it would really upset me.

But now I can disassociate myself from that. I

think maybe it's just time that does it. The longer

I've done this, the more I've learnt how to deal

with it and not be dragged down by it. But I did at

the start. It really upset me.

BJÖRK: You have one relationship with your

grandmother and one with your boyfriend and

one with the guy in the grocery shop. That doesn't

mean you're being fake or untrue, it's just that you

have those different colours in you.

TORI: You have to know what your intentions are.

In this little time we've spent together, supporting

each other, I sense that our intentions are about

exposing things within our own beings which

become mirrors for other people. Like when I lis-

ten to Polly's words, I see pieces of me that I'm not

willing to see. So I'm like (takes a series of deep

breaths) OK, be with this for a moment, Tori, and

hear what Polly is saying. And I hear pieces of

Björk that I cut out a long time ago. The girl that

jumps off rooftops, that part. It's all about con-

sciousness. We're not actors. I think songwriters

are the consciousness or the unconscious of the

time. That's what the poet's job is. I'm only a mir-

ror. If someone hates my guts, then they only hate

half of me. Do you understand? Fifty per cent of it

is me and 50 per cent of it is them. A great review?

Half of that is them.

BJÖRK: Sorry, it's nothing personal but generally

journalists don't have a clue. I don't expect them

to have one. It's very rare that you read something

with some insight. Maybe five per cent of reviews

I can identify with and then only a little bit.



Q: But certain reviews must stay with you.

BJÖRK: Um. I'm not saying. (Laughter).

TORI: What I remember is spending three hours

with someone for an interview and you've gotten

to know them a little bit and talked about very

intimate things and tried to be open. Then you

read what they've written and you think, God, this

is not where I was. You feel really invaded. You

think, Well, that is a Cornflake Girl. People want

to know what a Cornflake Girl is? That journo

right there.



Q: Don't you feel you sometimes reveal too much

of yourselves?

BJÖRK: I think if there is a place to reveal yourself

then it's in the songs. It's not like you decide, OK,

I'm going to reveal myself. It's just a certain need.

You're just focusing on the things you're talking

about and not necessarily yourself. I compare what

I do to sleeping, because most journalists seem to

get that pretty easily. There's no way you can

decide what position you're going to be in when

you wake up in the morning. You just roll around

the bed and it happens. And if you don't do it for a

week, you go mad.



Q: Do you feel in control of your lives?

POLLY: Yep. I do. Nearly. (Laughter).

BJÖRK: I could be more in control but I don't want

to be. I'm in control as much as I want to be. I

decide what happens. I'm always so thirsty for this

element of surprise that I don't want to plan more

than a few days ahead.



Q: But surely in your current position you can't do

that. It must be difficult to be spontaneous.

TORI: What's spontaneity? There isn't any spon-

taneity. I'm just speaking for me right now. On

stage when I play, that's my moment of freedom

but 19 hours a day are packed with what's got to

happen to get to the next show. I'm a bit of a road-

dog. I love to play. I guess it's because I did clubs

for 14 years before Little Earthquakes happened.

So I know what I'm doing on September 6 or

August 7. I could look at an itinerary and tell you

where I'll be. Although I don't know what shoes

I'll be wearing on August 7. Will you call me up

and cheer me up on August 7?

POLLY: Course I will. It's funny, you have to try

and keep this balance between being organised

and being creative and keeping everything in bal-

ance in your head and monitoring everything

that's going on.

BJÖRK: It's about allowing enough space for acci-

dents to happen. Being in control and yet not. Being

just in control enough. That really turns me on.

POLLY: I got that last night! Half a bottle of wine

and I was thinking, Wor! What a great life!



Q: You all perform with a great degree of abandon.

What does that mean to you?

TORI: It's everything.

POLLY: It's what gets me through. . . my life. It

reminds you about why you wanted to do it in the

first place because you have a love and a need to

do it.

BJÖRK: It's hard to pin it down without bringing

out a string of clichés. It's an addiction, but it's not

just that.

TORI: You're not even thinking any more. You

just free up your mind and express. There's noth-

ing calculated. I don't play the piano, the piano

plays me.

BJÖRK: You sacrifice yourself. And you lose

everything - like the fact that I'm this big and an

Icelandic female and all that. I think this is the rea-

son music and sex are so often compared to each

other. The most common way of feeling this is

probably in sex. Because when you're having sex

you don't think, I'm now going to move my left

arm 30 centimetres. You just have to do some-

thing and you follow your instincts. In that sense,

although I'm not saying I'm thinking about sex all

the time when I'm on stage, it's a very similar feel-

ing to having very good sex with someone.

TORI: That's so good that you have sex like that. I

have a much harder time opening up in the inti-

mate sex realm because I have stuff I have to deal

with. I don't have to go there emotionally when I

play. I feel safe when I play. It's harder for me to

feel that in sex. The only time I can really feel it is

when I play and I guess that's why I do so many

shows. I'm dry. In real life I'm bone dry, and when

I play I'm a mango and in sex I'm starving to be a

dripping mango.

BJÖRK: I'm not very good at communicating

things but with music it makes sense.

POLLY: I think you're really good at communicat-

ing.

BJÖRK: Yeah, but I have to use my brain a lot and

it's taken 28 years to get to this.



                    * * * * *



Q: Do you go mad when you tour?

BJÖRK: You bet, man. You start off with fucking

health foods and no alcohol. . .

POLLY:. . . you're really cleaned out and you're

eating well and doing exercise, swimming every

day, and by the end of the tour you're drinking to

calm down instead of meditating or whatever, and

eating crap and smoking.

TORI: It's really great for me to hear this because

my tour starts tomorrow.

BJÖRK: And your reading just goes down the

toilet. You start off reading highly spiritual, good-

for-the-brain things and by the end I'm just read-

ing about fucking and sex orgies.



Q: Do you ever feel like you can't be bothered to

perform?

TORI: Yeah, of course, but you can tap into that

source. I'm just a conduit for some kind of power.

I'm just a vase and the water is flowing through

me. You put your hands on the voltage and it

surges through you and if the crowd are giving that

out too, it can completely energise you back.



Q: How do you deal with hecklers?

TORI: There's always somebody that makes you

want to doubt yourself and scream at you. I have a

very quiet house when I play, so I can always hear

them. I don't know if there are any hecklers loud

enough for Polly to hear from the stage.

BJÖRK: Meat Loaf!

TORI: Get off the stage you fucking whore! They

shout that and so you (leans forward aggressively)

and go, Look, I'm here for an hour and fucking 20

minutes and if you don't have a gun to blow me off

the stage then I'm staying.

POLLY: I've had people from beginning to end just

shouting, You fucking bitch! Go back to fucking

Yeovil! I always wonder why they've paid money

to do that. I just smile and sing at them and that

seems to work. Dedicate a song to them, maybe.

That always works.

TORI: When that happens, your first reaction is to

just crawl into a bubble bath and have a pizza. But

you have to respect yourself and draw the line and

deal with it. I don't like confrontations but you

have to do something.

BJÖRK: And you learn, after a while, to turn every-

thing into something that turns you on. It's like

you've got this button. You learn to use things. If

someone shouts at you, you can use it to make a

song better.



Q: Can you be megalomaniacs?

BJÖRK: In my case, I wish I was little bit more of a

megalomaniac. Just kidding. OK. I'm guilty!

POLLY: Me too.



Q: Unbearable?

TORI: Of course.

BJÖRK: You might attack some innocent room ser-

vice people sometimes.



Q: How does it feel to be an object of lust?

POLLY: An object of lust!

TORI: What's lust? (Laughter)



Q: Student desire.

BJÖRK: Student desire. Mmm. I have to say that a

lot of that is created by the media.



Q: But it's true. You are all lusted after in some

way or other.

BJÖRK: I just can't relate to it.



Q: But that doesn't stop it existing.

BJÖRK: I know. Maybe we should talk about this.

It's very difficult.



Q: Didn't you fancy pop stars yourselves when

you were young?

BJÖRK: No, I was into Albert Einstein and David

Attenborough. I really lusted after him.

POLLY: David Attenborough was lovely.

TORI: Sorry, girls, but Robert Plant did it for me.

Sorry. I was 10 years old and I wanted to give him

my virginity. I decided that he was better than all

the boys in my class.

BJÖRK: I just wasn't interested in boys until a few

years ago. I thought they were shit. You can't talk

to them, especially as a teenager. You could play

with them in a band but as people they were so

limited. You can't get properly drunk with them,

like, all-the-way drunk.

TORI: Are you serious?

POLLY: I was a late starter as well. I didn't start

dating until I was 20 and I'm 24 now.

TORI: I was in love with this boy when I was five

years old and I knew we could really make it work.

I was trying to convince him and he took this ham-

mer and hit me with it really hard and, you're

going to hate me for this, but I was so stupid, I

tried to get my dad, the minister, to invite them

over because I wanted to see him and conquer his

heart. I was going to give him bubblegum and then

he'd let me into the tree house to play with his toy

machine guns. I just wanted to be with

him so bad.



Q: Did it work out?

TORI: No. Never. He called me a nerd.



                     * * * * *



Q: Do you ever use drugs when you're

writing?

BJÖRK: Drugs? What are you talking

about? (Laughter)

POLLY: You mean drugs as a tool to

help write? Only really alcohol and

then not much.

BJÖRK: I sing best without anything. I

know this sounds really hippy, but

being on top of a mountain in the mid-

dle of the day would be best for me. But

to be able to socialise with all these peo-

ple, because I'm quite an introverted

sort of person, I'll have a cognac before

I go on stage. But even that's more of a

ritual than anything. And maybe a bot-

tle of wine afterwards to chill down.



Q: Do you ever fancy pop stars now or

do you understand the contrivance of

image too well to do that?

TORI: I think we've been doing this too

long to fall for that.



Q: Don't you ever look at a picture of

Morrissey and think, Phwoar!

BJÖRK: Morrissey? You're joking.

POLLY: It's more likely to be someone who works

in the pub down the road. You don't fancy people

just because they're pop stars. And it's not just

men. Women can be attractive too.

TORI: kd lang is kind of attractive. And the grip

who was on the video shoot the other day was very

attractive.

BJÖRK: Headphones really turn me on.

POLLY: Headphones?

BJÖRK: And good literature. The Story Of The

Eye by Georges Bataille usually does the job.



Q: You all draw on sex very heavily in your work.

TORI: Sexuality. There is a difference. Sex is this

(Inserts right index finger into left thumb-and fore-

finger 'O' shape). Sexuality is being in touch with

something that isn't just that. It's passion.

Sexuality is a much greater thing than, Do it all

night, honey.



Q: Sexuality, then.

POLLY: It's a very natural thing to write about, I

think. It's like getting yourself turned on to play in

a way. For me, music is something that is very sex-

ual. It's a turn on. It's not something to do with

your head, it's to do with your body, which is a

very sexual instrument. To bring sexual elements

into the lyrics to go with the music just makes per-

fect sense to me. It just happens.



Q: A lot in your case. Did you read Elvis Costello

saying that a lot of Polly's songs "seemed to be

about blood and fucking"?

POLLY: (Pause) Well, he's wrong. (Laughter).



Q: Are you flattered when elder statesmen of rock

- Eric Clapton, Costello, Warren Zevon-

announce that your records have been their

favourites in the last year?

BJÖRK: Half of me is a bit of a rebel, thinking that

someone my dad used to listen to, stuff like

Cream, saying that my stuff is all right must mean

I've gone wrong somewhere. But half of me is

really flattered. If you want the honest truth I'll be

sickly sentimental and say that if my best friend

says she likes a song it would affect me a lot more.



Q: Are you aware of what the public think of you?

BJÖRK: I think, in my case, it was decided that I

was an Eskimo elf. And I guess that's. . . (laughs)

something I'll have to live with.

POLLY: And I'm a mad bitch woman from hell. I

can't get enough sex or blood!

TORI: People's perceptions of Polly seem to be

completely off. Compared to when I met her,

excuse me, but Polly was like an angel. So loving.

So I think whoever made her out to be this mad

bitch woman has done her an injustice.



Q: But you must have done something to have

given people that initial impression.

POLLY: I suppose I give as much as I want to give.

I decide immediately if I like a person and if I do

then I'm myself, and if I don't, then I give nothing.

With Tori I liked her straight away, so she got me.

But people do have completely the wrong idea

about me, almost the opposite, in fact. And I'm

quite happy for it to be like that. Do I want loads

of people to know who I am? I'd much rather that

they didn't have a clue.

BJÖRK: I didn't get that "mad bitch" impression

from listening to Polly's records. I thought she

sounded like a caring person. I didn't expect her to

turn up with a chainsaw.



Q: Finally, do you have anything to add?

POLLY: Just, Thank you, really.

TORI: Could I ask you just please not to use any

exclamation points? It looks so awful.

BJÖRK: I've said far too much already. I should

learn to say less.