The Times interview and article about Jewel

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November 14 1998
METRO

So you haven't heard of her?  You soon will.  Raised in the
Alaskan backwoods, Jewel has sold seven million albums in America,
and she's still only 24.  Is she just another dippy hippy chick or
a new Joni Mitchell, asks Nigel Williamson

The big interview - Jewel's purpose

Jewel Kilcher, or Jewel as she prefers to be known, is mildly
embarrassed that her first album has sold ten million copies
worldwide. "I thought it was funny how seriously people took it,"
she says. "You should never take the work of an 18-year-old that
seriously. You should think, 'Maybe she has talent and she might
do well when she is older'. It's like student art. But critics
started comparing me to all kinds of great writers and that was
silly. I wanted to tell everybody to calm down."

This month the Alaskan singer-songwriter, now 24, releases her
second album, Spirit. And this time Jewel deserves to be taken
very seriously indeed. The album is such a huge advance on her
1996 debut, Pieces of You, that it looks set to establish her as
arguably the finest female singer-songwriter since Joni Mitchell.
It should also lay the foundation for her to repeat her phenomenal
American success in Britain; of ten million copies of Pieces of
You sold worldwide (seven million in the US) only 100,000 units
were shifted in the UK.

Made in just five weeks and with the songs apparently selected
from more than 200 in her portfolio, Spirit marks her full
flowering as a writer of lyrical substance and melodic invention.
There is a mature head on her young shoulders, as she dispenses
insights into the human condition.

Jewel has just flown into London from New York. She shows no sign
of jet lag and looks glowing. The last person to tell her that,
she says, was David Bailey, who got a little carried away during a
photo session. "He was shouting 'Show me that Arctic, frozen, icy,
glacial Alaskan soul!'," she recalls.

There is a buzz about Jewel which suggests that her time has come.
In addition to the new album, her first volume of poetry, A Night
Without Armor, has just been published in America. Her first
feature film, Ride with the Devil, set during the American Civil
War, in which she plays a young widow, opens next year. She is
also writing a book about her life, which she describes as "not an
autobiography but a collection of stories, vignettes, poems and
essays."

Whether she can keep up the pace remains to be seen, but the new
album exudes a built-to-last quality that suggests her talent will
still be shining brightly long after the likes of Alanis Morissette
and Fiona Apple have faded.

Jewel also comes complete with one of those unlikely rags-to-riches
biographies that sounds like the work of an over-imaginative
publicist: born on a homestead in Homer, Alaska (pop. 4,000) without
running water or electricity, parents divorced, lived in a camper
van in California, played the coffee houses, signed a record deal,
made one of the biggest albums of the Nineties and lived happily
ever after. But this biog is true.

So what does she feel she gained from such an unusual upbringing and
how might she have turned out if she had been brought up in New York
or L.A.?

"It was a discipline; a strong work ethic, physical labour and lots
of chores, so that gave me a certain strength," she says. "It meant
the focus of my life was never glamour or fame, so now I am in the
music business I don't feel overly caught up in it. I don't need it
and if I did, that would scare me."

Jewel's early existence was almost totally cut off from the usual
preoccupations of modern living. There was no television, radio,
movie-going or telephone. "I thought for a long time that it was a
negative that I wasn't raised with a lot of outside influences," she
says. "I'm beginning to realise that it kept me very creative. I was
never taught to watch TV. Instead I would sit down and write
something."

But it was an upbringing which left Jewel feeling distinctly out of
step with a world obsessed with instant gratification. "I used to
look at magazines when I was a kid and feel nauseous. It was so far
from my life and I didn't understand it. So I've always felt weird,"
she says.

Then there was the trauma of her parents' divorce when she was eight.
Her mother Nedra (who is now her manager) left, but Jewel stayed with
her father. "It was hard and it doesn't matter which parent you lose
- as a child it is devastating. But my mum always had a great way of
staying in touch even if we couldn't talk or see each other. She gave
me my emotional and spiritual side."

Before the family broke up, Nedra and Jewel's father Atz were a
variety act in local hotels and bars. "They did sketches and songs
and me and my brothers got up and did numbers. When they got divorced
it was just me and my dad. He taught me professionalism and
showmanship. He'd tell jokes and stories and sing cover songs. I sang
harmony behind him on Heartbreak Hotel and Eagles numbers even though
I had never heard the originals."

According to the legend, Jewel was so unaware of popular culture that
she didn't hear a Beatles record until she was 17. "Absolutely," she
confirms. "I had a friend, Steve Poltz, who would take me to his
house and say 'This is Let It Be'. He laid it all out for me because
I wasn't raised listening to music. I still don't go to records for
my relaxation. I tend to go to a book. When I listen to my own
records I hear my literary influences rather than musical ones."

Jewel met Poltz, a fellow singer-songwriter, when she moved to San
Diego after leaving Michigan's Fine Arts Academy in 1992. She was 18
and at a low point in her life, working in dead-end jobs and lacking
self-esteem and direction.

She moved into a blue 1979 VW camper van to save rent and her mother,
with whom she was by now reunited, occupied a similar van in the same
parking lot.

"I was aware that I wasn't doing anything worthwhile with my life. I
wasn't happy and I didn't know what the point of living was. I felt
so alone and isolated. I was struggling to eat and pay the rent and
when I moved into the van I felt a tremendous relief. I no longer had
to come up with $500 a month and I could start being creative."

Jewel was also constantly sick with kidney problems and could not
afford doctors. "I'm not feeling sorry for myself," she says. "But I
realised the world was a harsh place. I'd grown up with all my friends
on welfare and I didn't want to struggle all my life. I felt helpless
and I wanted a purpose. But what do you do? Become an environmental
lawyer? Join Greenpeace? Shave your head? March?"

Instead, she decided to get serious about her writing and singing.
"But that meant performing in a coffee shop, not getting a record
deal. I never thought that much of myself," she says. Her self-esteem
developed after she read a book called The Holographic Universe by
Michael Talbot. She goes into a long explanation of the book's theory
that the brain is like a radio dish and every thought emits a
vibration so that everything one is thinking is made manifest. She
decided that she was compounding her problems by radiating negative
energy. "I was cynical and bitter and I realised that it wasn't
helping me. I decided to concentrate on what would make me feel good
about waking up in the morning, to learn to reshape my thought
processes and empower myself."

The new positive thinking, combined with her voice and beguiling
songs, soon built Jewel a reputation, and by 1994 Atlantic Records
had been to San Diego to check her out. They signed her and
anticipated that her debut album - recorded at Neil Young's Broken
Arrow studio - might sell 30,000 copies.

Expectations were not high because Jewel resisted all suggestions
that the sound should be more commercially polished and insisted
instead on a simple folk structure constructed around her voice and
guitar. "I thought there was no way the record would be huge. I
always thought I would have a small, cool following. Somehow it
became popular. I was suddenly on magazine covers."

She can only find faint praise for the album: "It was a good record
for a teenager. It's very honest. It is all there - the awkwardness
and everything. Nothing is censored. I'm proud of its honesty. I'd
rather be awkward and honest than slick and not myself."

Yet success was not instant. "In 1994 the climate was different,"
Jewel explains. "It was the height of grunge and cynicism and
everything I was saying was trying to counter cynicism. It took the
climate to change before the record could do well. I toured
constantly which is the best thing you can do. Artists with any
longevity, like Neil Young and the Stones, have achieved that
through touring."

By 1996 the album had sold a million and looked to have run its
course. Jewel began recording a second album. Then You Were Meant
for Me was released as a single. It was a huge hit and the new album
was abandoned as Jewel went out touring again for another 18 months.
"I look at that aborted record as a pencil sketch for an oil painting.
I would have hated it to have come out because today it sounds dated.
By the time I did this record, I was ready. I've had the advantage of
four years since the last record so there is a lot of growth."

Did she really have 200 songs to choose from? "It doesn't mean that
they are all good," she laughs. "I'm writing less now, but better. I
used to be drunk on writing, like that first phase of being in love
when you want to do it all the time."

The five weeks she took to record Spirit represent indecent haste by
today's standards. "It was very focused with a specific theme. The
songs are all about empowering yourself. Your hands are slaves to your
mind. They build churches and they burn them. They hang people in
Texas and then they go home and hold children. I wanted to talk to
kids about how we can make a difference. The theme is intelligent
optimism, if you like."

She talks with a total lack of self-consciousness about her desire
"to help the world" and recently set up a charity, Higher Ground for
Humanity. Surely such simplicity invites cynicism?

"Probably, but I'm not saying there are no problems. It's about the
possibility of change. If our thoughts were manifested physically we
would all have black eyes, scratches, teeth knocked out. We'd be
mutilated because we are so hard on ourselves. People who are gay but
are guilty about it hurt themselves enormously.

"If you are a heroin addict and then you feel evil for doing it, you
compound the mutilation," Jewel continues. "Learning to love yourself
is very hard. I wish kids could see their own beauty. We need to
learn to be gentle with ourselves. You need an essay to say all that
but I had a three-minute pop song."

The other theme is the liberation of the spirit of the album title.
"The more we integrate our spiritual beings into our lives the more
whole we become. I think it is our generation's task to balance the
intellect and the heart."

Jewel seems bookish and sexually aware in equal measure. "As a kid I
was stuck on the idea that my worth was based on my ability to seduce
the opposite sex. At 15 I was vamping it up. We are conditioned to
believe that the pinnacle in life is romantic love. It was reading
that changed me. I learnt my humanity from Ana^os Nin, Bukowski, Pablo
Neruda, and I became more focused on my mind."

Yet there have been several high-profile men in her life, including
Poltz and Sean Penn. Currently single, she appears to have the happy
knack of keeping them as friends long after the relationship has
ended. "It seems very natural to me. I've never had relationships end
badly. I'm developing all the time and people don't always grow
together at the same rate. But my love never diminishes, just changes
to the point where I say 'I don't think we should sleep together any
more.' My admiration for that person remains intact."

Has success made her happy? "I'm always striving but I am finding more
comfort. That comes from my relationship with myself and not from my
external world."

Her ambition, Jewel says, is still to be creative in 20 years. "I'm
looking forward to growing old. Staying pure is the hard part and I'm
still learning what it takes to keep your creative spirit alive. Every
record doesn't need to sell ten million. You have to be bold and
prepared to fail." At the moment, the prospect of that seems remote.

Spirit is released on eastwest on November 16.
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