Wendy James – The Shape Of History Interview

“I’m halfway through my life – hopefully,” reflects the singer, when Classic Pop catches up with her summering in the south of France. “And if you’re lucky enough, you start picking up a bit of philosophical wisdom along the way. You gain an understanding of what matters, and what doesn’t, and an ability to love yourself, as well as others. I don’t mean narcissism – I mean not fighting with yourself any longer. I don’t know if it’s contentment, exactly. But being my 10th album, I wanted there to be messages in there forever – for eternity. A few guiding steps on how to… I dunno, live well, without blowing yourself up.”

Do You Dig It?

James’ description of the album as “a love letter and a thank-you note to life so far”, offers further evidence of someone comfortable in their own skin. “I mean, there are some things that could be better,” she smiles. “Like most people, one needs more money. But I haven’t got any mega-complaints. I’ve got some good friends, and I’ve made some good music.”

There’s no shortage of the latter on The Shape Of History, which leans heavily on sweet and – yes – mellow 60s pop, on tracks such as the dreamy Everything Is Magic and the jazzy, Bacharach swoon of This Declaration Of Love. But there are also “big, dirty, grungy songs” – on The Crack And The Boom Of The Creeps And The Goons, the James of old resurfaces to sing of “some tits here, a little ass there” – along with diversions into krautrock (Do You Dig It? Do You Love It? Is It Groovy?) and electropop (lead single Freedomsville).

Loyal Fanbase

The album was recorded shuttling between sessions in London and New York, before James headed to San Francisco to mix it with engineer Jesse Nichols. It sounds expensive, suggests Classic Pop, in an age when, unless you’re Taylor or Adele, recorded music isn’t making anyone rich.

“Just to give you some pure economics, it was cheaper for me to go to San Francisco on an economy ticket and stay in an Airbnb than it would have been to hire a studio in London,” James explains. “It sounds glamorous, but it’s more to do with the dollar to sterling conversion.”

As a young kid dreaming of being a rock star, did she ever think she’d have to worry about international exchange rates? “No,” she says. “Even at the end of Transvision Vamp, I thought the money was going to last forever…”

The flipside, though, is that she gets to be to the captain of her own ship: writing, self-producing and even retailing exactly the records she wants to make. “Because of the music I’ve made, and the little path I’ve trod since those early pop star days, I do have an exceptionally loyal and avid fanbase – some of whom I know on first name terms,” she says. “They’ve bolstered me through this journey. It’s not a massive Taylor Swift audience, but it is an audience that’s substantial enough to make sure I get from one album to the next.”

Velveteen Vamp

Those “early pop star days” with Transvision Vamp included two UK Top 5 singles – I Want Your Love and Baby I Don’t Care – as well as a chart-topping album in 1989’s Velveteen. Has she never been tempted to take the 80s nostalgia circuit shilling and get the band back together?

“No, because I know how difficult that would be, given all the people involved. And though I still look in the mirror and think I look good,” she laughs, “I can’t vouch for the others. But I’m not interested in seeing a bunch of old people jamming out tunes they did 30 years ago. Although I think Oasis are doing that right now,” she adds, with a trace of her former fire. “So when somebody offers me tonnes of money to do Transvision Vamp, you can quote me as saying I don’t want to do it…” – a pause for comic effect – “as I’m doing it.”

Going Solo

Back in the day, it was James’ job to strut and pout her way through songs written by Vamp guitarist Nick Christian Sayer. But it was a bruising collaboration with a more celebrated songwriter on her 1993 debut solo album Now Ain’t The Time For Your Tears that pushed her to start writing her own material.

“Working with Elvis Costello really made my focus precision-clear,” says James. “Because I didn’t particularly enjoy singing his songs. I was very excited at the beginning of it, but when I got into the process of singing his words, I started thinking, hang on, these aren’t very nice.”

On album tracks such as Puppet Girl (Hey little puppet girl/ Now it’s time to sing and dance) and We Despise You (Did you get what you paid for?/ Or did you only get what you deserve?) Costello and his co-writer (then partner) Cait O’Riordan certainly didn’t hold back the cynicism.

“He was doing the Brodsky Quartet album [The Juliet Letters] at the same time, which was very high-minded, and all that,” she recalls. “He would give these bitchy little asides to the music press about how he and Cait O’Riordan banged out my songs in a weekend. It was all about a silly, throwaway 80s pop star, which is how he perceived me to be. So I just thought: this isn’t very enjoyable, I’m going to write my own stuff.

Rebel Girl

“My boyfriend at the time, as you probably know, was Mick [Jones] from The Clash,” she adds, casually. “He went down to Denmark Street and got me a Portastudio, a microphone and a Copicat Echo machine. I already had a guitar. And he said to me, God love him, ‘Find your own voice’. So that’s what I did. I took the time to learn the guitar, and to write songs properly, and made a demo tape. Then Mick and I plateaued, and I moved to New York, where I met an engineer who’d worked with Sonic Youth, and he said, ‘Yeah, I’ll help you’.”

That demo tape became the first album by Racine, the indie rock outfit James fronted between 2004 and 2008, before striking out once more under her own name.

While she insists her songwriting isn’t hugely autobiographical, she concedes that “of course, everything is through one’s own prism”. So when she sings, on The Shape Of History’s A Happy Life, of people who “think they know you”, thoughts inevitably stray to the brickbats lobbed her way at the height of her fame with Transvision Vamp – when The Face called her the “woman everybody loves to hate”, and Time Out made her cover star of its ‘Hated 100’ issue.

“I left behind worrying about that stuff a long time ago,” she shrugs. “And even at the time, I didn’t let it wound me. When you’re surrounded by punks and you’ve got a seasoned punk as your partner, honestly, the attitude was: fuck them. So I never got injured. But I did wish the furore would die down a bit.”

Sex Sells

On top of her outspoken views (she’s always made good copy), much of that furore arose from the fact James used – shock horror – sex to help sell Transvision Vamp’s brand of seductive, dirty rock’n’roll. “I remember [TV presenter] Frank Bough asking me why I’d appeared on the cover of The Face, fairly unclothed, saying a proper singer wouldn’t do that. And I just said, ‘Well I can’t sing on the front cover, can I?’

“And the other one was [Saturday morning kid’s TV show] Going Live!, where I caused a ruckus by saying that I wasn’t wearing any underwear. I had to go upstairs and give a formal apology to the BBC directors.”

In that sense, the 80s was quite a puritan decade, in which people seemed to forget what the ‘roll’ bit of rock’n’roll actually meant (even the NME labelled James a “gender traitor” for daring to go on Top Of The Pops in her bra).

Naturally Fearless

Today, of course, no one would suggest superstars like Beyoncé and Dua Lipa can’t be feminists, just for showing a bit of flesh. “Exactly,” says James. “And my argument – beyond girls being allowed to dress how they want – is that fucking Mick Jagger had his top off since day one. Sorry for my language, but there was such a double standard.”

While growing up, James had dreamed of being “rich, famous and on Top Of The Pops”. Two out of three ain’t bad, suggests CP… “Well, I was rich as well for a little while,” she smiles.

But she always knew that, in order to make it happen, she’d have to go out and seize life by the throat. Partly, she says, that’s a product of her background: given up by her Norwegian parents shortly after birth, she struggled to fit into her adoptive family on the Sussex coast, and left home on her 16th birthday. “Inherently, I think I’ve always known that I was on my own,” she reflects. “So yeah, every opportunity has been there because I pursued it. I think people who make it have a Zelig instinct for getting to the right place at the right time. But I’m also naturally fearless, and I guess that’s because I knew, instinctively, there was nothing to fall back on.”

No Regrets

That same fearlessness was in evidence much later when James quit London for New York, leaving an entire house and all her belongings behind, and throwing all her gold and platinum records in the bin. “That was a bit rash,” she admits, with hindsight. “I could have sold them by now.”

But Wendy James is not one to dwell on regrets. And why would she, when her life so far has been such a wild ride? “There are things I should probably have done differently,” she concedes. “But no, no regrets. I’m sitting here doing what I want. I’m healthy, I’m surrounded by people that I love, and who love me.”

It’s that ride, meanwhile, which informs the title of her new album. “I made up The Shape Of History for that song [the title track]. And then I thought, actually, yes, that sums up the entire journey of getting to a 10th album. All this music, all the adventures I’ve been through. That’s the shape of my history.”

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