Throughout
the years, I have approached cultural events like a crow seeks out shiny
objects. I see an advert for something
or someone and for a variety of reasons, I am drawn to the new experience. Every so often, I see someone and then find
myself going to see a variety of their work over the years because something
about their personality and performance has gripped me. The performer, Camille O’Sullivan has had that
effect upon me. I have seen her in a
variety of venues ranging from the Royal Festival Hall to the Wilton’s Music
Hall. She is both a versatile
interpreter of the works of singer/songwriters such as Jacques Brel, Bob Dylan,
Nick Cave and David Bowie. Also she has
had an acting career starring in films such as ‘Mrs Henderson Presents’ and the
play ‘Woyzeck In Winter’. Her well
received interpretation and performance in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s ‘The
Rape Of Lucrece’ demonstrates her ongoing love of experimentation.
Camille
O’Sullivan has very kindly consented to allow me to interview her, so without
further delay, let’s begin and miaow!
When you were growing up, was music an
important feature in your life? Were
your parents musical or lovers of music?
Yeah, growing up music really was an important part of my life. Lived in quite an isolated situation in a
small village in the South of Ireland and we didn’t go out much. But what we did was kind of live an internal
life in this big old house with my father working at home and there was this
record player in the living room and I remember a kind of library of records
such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Gilbert
O’Sullivan, Deep Purple and Jacques Brel.
A really eclectic taste of different music. Listening to this music and also hearing
music through my sister’s wall such as Pink Floyd and David Bowie really
inspired me to become a singer. I’ve
ended up with quite a deep voice and I think that has developed as a result of
singing along to the likes of the Beatles and Bowie and as I have now ended up
actually putting that music into my set, so I have kind of returned to it. So that was something I think everyday we’d
kind of sing and dance around the living room and music was always really part
of our life. Now when I tour and sing
certain songs, I feel connected back to my youth, happy memories reconnecting
me back to my own parents and sister.
At what point, did you decide to become a
professional singer? Did other people
encourage you to become a singer or did you feel that it was a calling?
At what point did I want to become a professional singer? I didn’t really realise I wanted to be a
singer until I had a massive car accident, which was life-changing. I was in hospital for awhile and had to
relearn how to walk and how to use my hands again and it was when I was an
architect. Up to that stage, I had done
school plays and I had sung a little in them.
When I was in university, I had acted and then I had been asked to do a
show called ‘Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living In Paris’, which is the
music I had been brought up with by my mother who is French. Both my mother and father are big fans of his
music and up until that stage, I had done a bit of singing. Actually, I must admit in secondary school, I
had done a show called ‘Anything Goes’ by Cole Porter and there was a woman who came in to orchestrate that and she said you
really do have a talent as a singer and you should listen to this tape. So I listened to it and it was Ella
Fitzgerard and Sarah Vaughan and I learnt everything off it. Now I tried to sing a little bit of jazz when
I was in college but I never really got it or felt comfortable or kind of
understood or felt connected with it.
But when I sang the Jacques Brel show, the music and learning Kurt Weill
at the same time and I was living in Berlin on my year off as an Architect
student, I suddenly just felt this intensity and a strong cathartic engagement
with this music and the emotion it evokes.
I did the show and I remember my dad coming in. I think he went twenty times and brought all
of his friends and that was the first time I saw that kind of response from
him. I really thought that my career was
in jeopardy then because I realised I had never really felt that level of
intensity in my life before, singing. It
wasn’t necessarily something I wanted to go out and perform in front of people
but I certainly felt something about the emotion that it made you feel when you
sang. Maybe being French and Irish, I’m
quite an intense and emotional person and it was a real way of expressing my
self honestly. So later on when I had
done some small shows and had the car accident, I think it became clear to me
that I had this one life to live and my lack of confidence about going on stage
had to be put aside. I said to myself,
who cares what people are going to say or what the critics do? I want to go and become a singer which was a
massive shock to my sister who never knew that I really loved singing and my
parents were very supportive, although they worried, ‘oh God, what is going to
happen to you?’ So I stayed true to myself.
I used my left hand to write on the wall in my living room, where I was
stationed and when I couldn’t walk upstairs, that I wanted to be a singer. I gave up work and then I started writing to
venues and people trying to see if I could get gigs and to talk to people. So that was the start of it.
Having seen a number of your performances, I
feel that you are an extremely versatile interpretative singer. You seem to live the songs. As a performer are you attracted to the
lyrics of the songs that you cover or the melodies or a combination of both?
I think it’s definitely a mixture of both. Ah, lyrics are king for me. You know, that’s kind of what moves me. A story moves me at least; especially with
the likes of Nick Cave, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. Their songs feel like poems set to music and
when I did Jacques Brel, I appreciated how his work is very much focused around
narratives and stories. As I performed
his songs, I realised I was almost a storyteller in song, they were touching
the parts of me that loved to act, it was like doing a monologue. So when I saw a song with lyrics, I could
almost see a kind of geography to it and maybe, that’s my architectural side coming
out? I could see the dark, the light,
the silence and the pause and I learnt to find the moment in a speech or in the
story and I am constantly exploring how to make a lyric stand out in a
song. That’s very important to me. That’s probably come about after spending years
thinking to myself, oh God have I learnt anything as a singer? But I think what Feargal Murray, who works
with me on piano and I discovered, especially when we did that Shakespeare
piece (‘The Rape Of Lucrece’) was to take the poem and to simplify the musical
arrangement at the start and end of the piece to give it a clarity, a sense of
this is what it’s about and now, we’re going on this journey. But then you see, that’s just the narrative
songs. You’ve also got songs like ‘In
These Shoes’, which I performed on ‘Later With Jools Holland’ and ‘Moonage
Daydream’ by Bowie, where the main appeal is the joyous music. It’s not the story, it’s completely the
music, the rockiness and the rhythm. So
I think any music really moves me for different reasons.
I think in some respects as I have developed as a performer, I have
become quite like a chameleon. I become
different characters in every song and although that may sound like I am not
being truthful, I am. To be honest, all
of those characters are an aspect of you, so it’s you being even more truthful
than you’d ever be in your real life, you really expose yourself presenting
your vulnerability to the audience.
You’re fragile in front of people, for example, when you’re upset about a relationship gone wrong
and sharing a Nick Cave ballad like ‘People Ain’t No Good’ or ‘Into My Arms’. Then singing a song like ‘The Mercy Seat’
enables you to delve into a darker place with yourself that you would never be
like in your own life, which is really exciting as a woman because usually a
woman is seen as a femme fatale and sexy.
This persona is okay for songs like ‘In These Shoes’ but with songs like
Tom Waits’ ‘Misery Is The River of the World’, you can be a haphazard, drunken
man. Performance allows you to cross
between being a man, a woman to a child.
You can be vulnerable or strong. That’s an aspect of storytelling but also rock
‘n’ roll allows you to do that because it provides a sense of wild
abandonment. I do feel that I inhabit it
and I feel that sometimes, I live my life more on stage than I do naturally off
stage. Offstage, I am probably a shyer,
although very friendly Irish person but definitely wouldn’t get up to half of
the things I do there. I sometimes come
off stage completely embarrassed and say to myself,’ I can’t believe that I did
that.’
So it’s a combination (of both the music and lyrics) for sure. Possibly, when I think about being brought up
on classical music, I just find you are haunted by certain melodies owing to
the lack of words. I think about dancing
to ballet. I also like bands like Pink
Floyd and I am a big fan of Radiohead.
Sometimes, I don’t know what the lyrics are about but God, the music is
so mind-blowingly amazing. So yep, I
hope that explains that.
In
performance, I have been mesmerised by your almost acapella approaches to such
songs as Brel’s ‘Amsterdam’. At what
point did you realise that sometimes the only percussion necessary is the sound
of a pounding foot hitting the stage?
Yeah, it’s interesting about the acapella approach to certain songs, it
doesn’t work for all of them. But I
remember that came about because we used to do that song (‘Amsterdam’) with a
full band. It started off with just one
instrument, an accordion or guitar and then as each verse progressed as you
sometimes do, another instrument was added, piano and then drums. But I got really frustrated as time went
on. Something about the rhythm. I am not great with rhythm full stop as every
person in the band will tell you, don’t follow her foot because it’s doing its
own thing. I use the foot for different things
especially in acapella to keep me in time.
I sometimes use it as a method by which to take power on the stage. Not to get attention but definitely stamping
my own foot to get into what that song is.
So it’s doing several different things and I’ve had to watch out what my
foot is doing because it’s just become part of me and my performance. I think our whole family on the French side
does it, but the ‘Amsterdam’ thing was interesting. I just started finding that I was hemmed in
when the band were doing it and I wasn’t able to express what I wanted of the
song. The band got frustrated because I
would go slow down here, just take a pause there, feel here and then I thought
I can’t wait anymore to do this. I can’t
teach really great musicians how to do this song because I am trying to live in
the moment when I sing it and the only way I am going to do that is if I start
doing it by myself. You’ve definitely
got to be brave to sing the song alone because there is a moment in that song
that you go, Jesus, I haven’t a clue where I am and what is that tempo? I still to this day get quite nervous of
forgetting the words and you can feel the fear shoot through your body when you
are half way through it. Even though,
certain songs are almost embedded in your body, they will find their way out
even though, you think oh God, I am going to forget what the next line is. But something like that song I find is very
kind of feral and vulnerable. Someone
compared me to a fragile soldier when I performed it on one occasion. I think sometimes when you sing acapella, it
does show a kind of courage in a way as a performer and what I find interesting
is the fact that I always think great songs can stand on their own. The best songs can be sung without any
instrument and that goes to show the calibre of how great that song is. The song ‘Amsterdam’ plus ‘Marieke’, which
are my two favourites of Brel, they’re the two songs I sing acapella most often
in live performance. I think they are
the only ones and they both have a kind of mountain to climb and yet there’s a
certain amount of embarrassment when you going full out emotionally, but with
Brel, you just can’t go there 50 percent, you’ve got to go 100 percent. It’s like a calling, it’s like a yearning and
it’s a defiance and you are spent at the end of it and the foot just comes out
because it’s just giving everything you have in it. Singing it gently or quietly or trying to
make a rationale of it, doesn’t make sense.
Those songs you just have to engage with, feel them and give yourself
over to them. The only other way I can
say explain it is sometimes people say I love your dancing on stage. I’m like what do you mean I was dancing? You get into a song, you don’t even know what
you are doing and that’s how those acapella songs are. I have realised as time’s gone by with
acapella songs and shows, silence is as important as the singing. So sometimes, the time you take to start a
song and explain it and deliver it quietly first of all is a way to bring the
audience to you. Also as the years have
gone past, I sing that song (‘Amsterdam’) really differently to how I did it
twenty years ago. So it depends on what
mood you are in on that day or if the audience is more you know, loud or
quiet. So every time you sing it is a
different way. I hate not including it
in sets but sometimes, you do that because you have done it so many times and I
think if there is a stage that I don’t feel it anymore, I will try it with the
band again. But at this moment, I feel
closest to the song when I can do it acapella.
Sorry for that long explanation.
You often describe in concert, how you have
favourite artists such as Brel, Cohen, Bowie, Waits and Dylan. When faced with the enormity of their back
catalogues, how do you choose the songs that you decide to perform? In relation to that, I have heard you perform
Cave’s ‘The Ship Song’ at almost every show I have seen. What does the song mean to you? Melodically, the song has always held my
attention but I still struggle with the verse ending ‘When I must remove your
wings and you must learn to fly.’ I
think I struggle because emotionally, the lines resonate with me but rationally,
they are hard to define. What does the
verse mean to you in performance?
Yes, it is difficult. I love all
their music but there will be specific songs that make me feel I need to listen
to it a thousand times. Like any person
who loves music, there’s a certain song that really moves you. Albums such as Dylan’s ‘Blood on the Tracks’
are mind blowing to me and Cave’s ‘The Boatman’s Call’. There’s certain CDs and you know, ‘Ziggy
Stardust’. I cannot… I will never tire
of listening to those albums. Then
there’s certain songs like ‘Five Years’ and ‘Moonage Daydream’, I just feel
like crying when I listen to them. So if
I have a very strong emotional reaction, whether it’s happy, sad, a need to
dance or cry, I know I probably should try and sing it. It was a bit like every night I used to get
ready for a show in Edinburgh and I used to listen to ‘Revelator’ by Gillian
Welch alot and I knew then after a month
that I had better try that song and record it.
Now I think what’s interesting is the fact that I don’t do a tribute to
the artist, I think it’s really important that if I am singing somebody else’s
stuff, I try to make it my own. Even if
that’s really making it hymnal and simplifying it down or rocking it up like
‘Revelator’. What I’ve found in the past
is that certain songs belong to you and some don’t. So however much you love a certain song,
doesn’t mean you will be able to sing it.
Regarding ‘The Ship Song’, I don’t think I loved it at the start as much
as ‘Into My Arms’ or ‘People Ain’t No Good’ but I tried to sing it on and off for
two years. I tried every time but I could
not get a grasp how to sing it and then one day with a certain piano player, we
just did it really simple on chords, which is how I unlock a lot of my songs
now, just playing chords first and sing the song… Slow it down, speed it up and
slowly, I felt a connection to the song where I went oh that beginning, that
gentleness or the kind of lullaby version.
I found the song belonged more to me like that. I find things being in time and rhythm really
throws me out. I find being out of time
liberating. I am a big fan of Mary
Margaret O’Hara who I was very lucky to work with once on stage. She was singing and I realised that the
sensation of being slightly out of time and also not knowing what that person
is going to do next was very exciting to me.
Back to ‘The Ship Song’, years ago, I did wedding band stuff which was
really tough to try to make money from and I always said to the band, I am not
going to do this song if it sounds like a wedding band version. I needed to feel like I owned it. Anyway, we started off really quietly with
the song and as time went on, we added the band as the verses grew into an
explosive kind of rock moment and now of course, the show ends with us singing
either really gently as a band or getting the audience to sing. The song itself has many different kinds of
meaning. I think it’s more the essence
of the feeling of the melody mixed with the lyrics rather than the absolute
meaning of those lyrics. What they mean
to me, I’m connected more to… ‘And let you hair hang down’ (Camille sings the
song). ‘We make a little history
baby/Every time you come around’ is something I feel that refers to me and the
audience who are there in front of me.
We all matter to somebody and we all matter in the story and then ‘Come
loose your dogs upon me/And let your hair hang down/You are a little mystery to
me’… Those are the lyrics that touch me because ‘let your hair hang down’ almost
feels like a gentle invitation to people like myself who are shy and reserved. They are expressing the wish to be a child,
let yourself express yourself and also that there’s a mystery to all of us and
isn’t that true of everyone, whatever they are like? So lyrics mean a lot. The ‘wings’ verse… I am not always literal
with stuff but I think sometimes, you just take the essence of let yourself be
liberated and free. I wouldn’t take it
as a literal thing.
For me, I always dedicate songs such as ‘The Ship Song’ to people who
are maybe gone in my life and people who I really loved who aren’t with me
anymore. I dedicate it to them and I
have a memory in my head as I sing it. A
very similar memory every time of a situation between me and a friend. It is a very conscious decision on my behalf
that I sing it to them as I am singing the song and that locks me into a very
kind of personal, intimate thing in my head.
I am also including the audience but I am remembering somebody that I
really treasure. So that’s a song that
matters a lot to me because it’s like a constant farewell between me and that
friend but it’s also a way to keep that person very close to me in my
life. Recently, I had to sing that song
at a funeral for someone who had almost been a paternal figure in my life and I
couldn’t even get through the piece. As
a singer, you think that you can do these things but of course, you can’t all
of the time because all of those songs mean something and you can sing them
every night and every show and they mean something different to every audience
member. That particular song holds a
resonance that when you are spent at the end of the gig, you are both saying
farewell to the audience but you are also including people in your life that
you care for, hopefully that doesn’t sound too weird.
You ask me why I choose the other songs?
I suppose for all different reasons.
‘Don’t Think Twice (It’s Alright)’ represents defiance and anger. I always tell the band if you are pissed off
with somebody even me take it out on them now in this song, I say really let it
rip and they are kind of looking at me with a ‘what do you mean?’ look in their
eyes. A song like Leonard Cohen’s
‘Anthem’, I include because it’s a very beautiful, hymnal thing about the world
and where we’re at. It was very suitable
for when we did that show, ‘Where Are We Now?’ but also I think it’s a timeless
piece, you couldn’t even base an era on that piece, it feels like it is of now
and yesterday but it’s everybody’s song.
Then other songs like ‘Five Years’ made me feel like crying when I heard
it. So I just wanted to express it and I
think that when I sing it now, it has a different feeling attached to it
because I miss Bowie so much. Before I
was kind of living that story, now I am almost saluting Bowie when I perform
the song. So there’s all different
reasons. But definitely, as I explained
earlier, some songs do belong to you and some don’t. A lot of the time to lock yourself into a
song when you are singing the very quiet songs like Cave, you don’t move an
inch but you are thinking of a scenario and sometimes, it feels like a little
film is running through your head. You
are very connected to the audience, it’s very present, but sometimes, it’s like
you’re singing to yourself and that’s what makes you inhabit it, making it
personal to you.
I also choose songs in a set to reflect what is dark, light and
funny. Songs that rock and ballads. Also songs that encourage dance. You are drawn to certain songs but then in a
show, you’ve got to make it a varied journey and a surprising one for the
audience.
Relating to the above, when planning your
set list each performance, do your band mates contribute to the set?
Not really… The band mates don’t contribute to the set. Occasionally, one or two of the people I have
worked with have recommended a song. So
yes, there have been some great suggestions and they have also come from the
audience, which I think is really lovely.
Hopefully, they come to the show because they like what I do and the
music I sing, so they have a great back catalogue too and I can listen to their
ideas. But usually, I sit there by
myself. The only person I have really
shared that much with would be Feargal Murray who I have worked with for over
twenty years. He is really supportive
and regularly says I believe in you, I think that’s truthful and that moves me
when I am performing. When I worked with Cathal Synott for ‘The Carny Dream’, he was great at encouraging me as we
would work through songs and when I had no confidence to sing songs such as
‘Lullaby’ by Billy Joel, he would say ‘that was so stunning’. So sometimes, I don’t believe in my own
thoughts. I sit for a long time,
collecting songs, listening to them and some I put on the back burner. Occasionally, I return to a song that I
didn’t think really suited me and it did actually but at the point I started
working with the song, I wasn’t at the right place in my life, I hadn’t had
enough bad relationships to relate to the song.
Now I know how to sing it. So I’d
sit on it. I’d probably walk around
singing to myself then I’d bring it to Feargal and he and I start working out
how we might perform it and then we bring it to the band. But during rehearsals, I must say sometimes
the band are good at telling me, I liked that but I didn’t like this.
Your stage sets have altered quite a bit over
the years. I remember lots of dresses
and outfits suspended from the ceiling at the Southbank Centre at one
show. Are you responsible for the stage
design or do you work on it collaboratively with others? One element recurs,
the rabbit. Please can you explain what
the rabbit means to you?
Yep, I do all the stage sets myself and all the design of the posters
and CDs. You know I did painting before
and architecture? I am a control freak
in my own way of not wanting to… I want to kind of envisage a world for each
song and each show. The show you mention
in the Southbank Centre, I spent a very long time doing the dresses in the air
and then we put lights in them. I think
around the same time, I saw this really great photographic exhibition, which
had the same idea of the dresses with the lights in them. So that inspired me to want to include that
element in my set design. The various
others things I included as part of the mise en scene, I had been thinking
about for awhile such as Dorothy from ‘The Wizard of Oz’, the rabbit, the
little piano on stage, the poor bird being hit in the song ‘All The World Is
Green’. Recently, we did the masks… I
made these masks that you wore on stage, whilst there were dresses on the
ground floor and a gingerbread house.
Then the last show was the simpler set design of the moon and the earth
and a computer that was lit with different LEDs lighting my face whilst I was
singing ‘The Crack of Doom’, which is about the internet almost driving you
crazy and Trump. The fun aspect of
creating can be the experience of realising your ideas. For example, I said to various people, can
you make a book that lights up your face when you open it and you are told that
previously we have only done LEDs for kitchens and haven’t done anything like
this before.
The rabbit? I remember seeing the
rabbit somewhere and just loving it. Its
quirkiness really. The rabbit appeared
probably about ten years ago. I used to
say that the rabbit knows everything and that’s not much and the audience used
to laugh. I didn’t really understand
what I mean either but it was like a character and now the rabbit has its own
painting! There was a painting done in
an exhibition in France my father came across and it was the rabbit that knew
everything and that’s not much. It shows
a very abstract representation of the rabbit with the dresses and my father
bought it for my birthday. Then the
rabbit appeared somewhere else in London in another painting, so that rabbit
has its own thing. I actually can’t
remember if the rabbit came before ‘Changeling’. But I do remember the album cover shoot for
the ‘Changeling’, my hair was messy and I was like ‘oh Jesus, I’ll put this wig
on’ and I remember suddenly asking the photographer for the rabbit. The rabbit was then used in the shoot, it was
brilliant. So everybody asks after the
rabbit and on stage, I feel that he is my little good luck mascot. It has no name, it’s just the rabbit and he
travels everywhere with me. There’s
actually two of them, so I have one at home and one that is ready to go on
tour. Both are much loved. It’s not really as out there as Dada and
Surrealism, but the band are always laughing, wondering what is going to happen
next. But I like those little quirky
things.
Another recurrent motif of your shows is the
dulcet tones of the audience, miaowing and you responding in kind (I too have
made the cat sound at your shows). When
did this start and are cats and animals in general important in your life?
The cat thing is weird. I found a
little card recently with my name on it, miaowing, it was from when I was in
architecture. I think I have been
miaowing since I was little. I love cats
and think I would just miaow at somebody if I was happy about something and I
have no clue how that came about on stage and then just turned into a
thing. In many respects, I think it’s a
positive thing, don’t argue with each other, it’s better to miaow and the
audience pick up on this feeling and
miaow back. I mean it was very funny
when we did the RSC production (‘The Rape of Lucrece’) at the Edinburgh
Festival, I heard that the people minding the audience before they came in,
they were all advised to make sure the audience don’t do this and if they
miaow, tell them once, then one more time not to do it and then if they do it a
third time, remove them. I just laughed
at the fact that they had been told this thing could happen in my show. I don’t do it all the time now because I
think… You know even my partner says just be careful not to repeat things like
the dresses or the miaows or things like that but I find that hard because I
think for me it represents the purest kind of childhood affection. The world is hard enough as it is, there’s
something very sweet about being eccentric and making people miaow. It’s connecting you to people and it’s making
fun of yourself and it’s a joyful thing and music is all of those things
too. Maybe, as time went on, when I
started I wanted to be more enigmatic and my friend said, ‘you’re quite
eccentric, Camille, so why don’t you share that stuff on stage?’ So I think that’s where this joyfulness and
miaowing came from and it’s always been part of my life. It’s funny because there’s another Camille
who is French and I have heard that she miaows and woofs on stage, so I don’t
know whether it’s a Camille thing… But I think sometimes those childlike things
unlock something in the audience and they go, oh yeah, okay we’re going… it’s
left of centre, we are going to open up here and not be maybe as reserved. You know, we are going to miaow.
I have seen some of your theatrical work such
as a play you performed at the Barbican called ‘Woyzeck in Winter’. For me, this was memorable as much for the
play and performances as the set comprised of pianos. Do you enjoy acting or do you prefer the
experience of musical performance, owing to the space it provides for
improvisation and spontaneity. I felt
that your performance in ‘The Rape of Lucrece’ brought the text to life. How demanding was it to perform such a tragic
yet strong figure each night?
Yes, I do enjoy acting but I think I enjoy singing more. Well, I suppose you get different things from
acting and singing. I am really nervous
about singing because that’s me on stage and I have a real problem with people
being critical of me or not enjoying the show.
I am anxious each time I create a new show. I hope that the show I have created will
please the audience and the great thing about acting is I can say to myself,
well look, Shakespeare wrote it and I am just being directed, so it’s not my
problem. Maybe, I am not the best
actress but hopefully, I don’t have the weight of the people who wrote and
directed it? Whereas, I have all of that
pressure when I create my own shows. It
was really brilliant to be part of ‘Woyzeck in Winter’. I think the hardest aspect of being in that
show was being hemmed in on how I had to sing.
I couldn’t sing the way I would have liked to. That’s an advantage to producing my own
shows, I just do what I want and I decide what I want and that’s where I feel
very lucky, how I have managed to orchestrate a career to do my own performing.
‘The Rape of Lucrece’ was very similar.
I mean when Elizabeth Freestone who directed me saw me in Edinburgh at
the Fringe, she noticed that I could perform all of these different types of
characters as a storyteller and embraced both the dark and the light of human
nature. So when she brought us the poem,
it was like a perfect gift. I can never
thank her enough for letting us perform the poem. At first, Feargal and I were not sure how to
approach the challenge of bringing the poem alive on stage. We knew how to take a song and in principle,
we felt that we could bring this four hundred year old poem to life, allowing
this woman’s voice to be heard, one of his biggest voices within this poem,
women not always being heard within Shakespeare. The challenge was how to make her feel like a
three dimensional character. So I felt
very lucky that Elizabeth Freestone really let us try and understand how to
create that music. So it really comes
from us. There was nobody saying, oh
you’ve got to sing in time and this is your key, which had to happen with
‘Woyzeck’ as you had to be a certain type of singer for that production. ‘The Rape of Lucrece’ felt closer to me as
Feargal and I could fight over a chord.
Feargal is an amazing musician and it’s so beautiful what he did on it
and I was lucky that I could go with a certain melody if I wanted to or if I
felt it, I could sing it in a certain way.
It made me feel as though I was singing from the heart. It was an amazing experience doing ‘The Rape
of Lucrece’. There’s an anxiety of you
being involved with the Royal Shakespeare Company and I felt anxiety as I had
never done this kind of thing before in acting.
But what they wanted from me was not to be the perfect actor. They wanted Feargal and I to create something
that felt real. Music can bring the
truth out of a composition a hundred times more effectively than saying the
words alone. Singing can make the words
emotive very quickly, you can be very dark, very angry or very violent with a
song, in a way that might seem overblown if you were acting it alone. What interested Feargal and I was the way the
words, the lyrics and music worked together.
The rhythm of it. We worried that
everything was going to sound the same but luckily because it was a poem in
royal rhyme, this wasn’t the case.
We found whilst working with the poem, ‘The Rape of Lucrece’ that the
way the words were spoken on each monologue informed how I performed each
character, they each contributed to the rhythm of the piece. For example, you just took the timing from
such lyrics as ‘daughter, dear daughter, oh Lucretius cries’ which enabled
every song to feel very natural. The
spoken lyric would bring you to natural rhythm.
As a piece to perform, it was so incredible. I’m still so connected to it. I remember trembling… my knees trembling. I felt like I was going to collapse on the
first night we ever did it and I didn’t know which verse was going to come
after the other, but I found it a really challenging experience to be the voice
of this person (Lucrece). You don’t have
to go to a psychiatrist to understand the human experience, just read
Shakespeare. You know this woman because
she is wronged goes on this tremendous journey of defiance and in the end,
exhibits a very dignified response to it.
It was incredible to swim in Shakespeare’s words and be that close to
the poem by singing it. I loved the fact
that as a singer I was used to letting it rip.
At points, in my career, I have felt very embarrassed performing full
force on stage but I realise that’s the only way I can be. I’d love to be a different type of singer but
I have learnt how to be gentle on the quiet stuff and crazy on the wild stuff. My performance style actually helped during
that massive moment, ‘Comfort Killing Night’, that song where Lucrece is
essentially questioning everything. I
was able to convey her anger and annoyance in a way that I maybe couldn’t have
if I had just acted the role. I am so
proud of Feargal and I for that piece of work.
Probably the proudest I have been of anything we’ve ever done. I felt that it was such a challenge and we
both kind of looked at each other in Stratford-Upon-Avon, going I can’t believe
we are all the way from Ireland doing this thing. So it was a major moment in our lives.
You are about to perform a show at the Wilton’s
Music Hall based on the songs of Nick Cave.
How have you chosen which songs to perform for this show? You have been performing such songs as ‘Red
Right Hand’, ‘God Is In The House’ and ‘The Ship Song’ in your shows over the
years. Are there any particular albums
by Nick Cave that you particularly like?
Also have any of the artists you have covered ever commented on your
interpretations of their songs?
I am really looking forward to doing the music of Nick Cave. As you rightly pointed out, I have sung a
number of his songs over the years but I am a little bit nervous to be
performing a complete show of his songs.
The only other person I have created a show around was Jacques
Brel. Also recently we did a night of
Bowie (‘Lady Stardust’, a one off concert involving such notable performers as
Duke Special and Eliza Carthy) but I suppose I was scared of that performance
being a tribute thing. So I have approached
this show in a different way. I have
involved somebody, Joe Fletcher who is an incredible lighting and projection
artist, so it’s a very theatrical evening.
I wanted to create a mood to it. I
mean the favourite songs of course are going to be in there, ‘Red Right Hand’,
‘God Is In The House’ and ‘The Ship Song’ and also some other songs I have sung
over the years. Then some songs from the
latest album and other songs I have never sung before. I have even taken on board, ‘Stagger Lee’,
which is one of my favourite songs but I was terrified to go near it because I
thought that is so outrageous as a song and as a woman like what is going to
happen when I perform it? Am I going to
have people walking out but I thought, look, if you’re going to do Cave, you’ve
got to do Cave. So again, this show has
been about offering a varied look at Cave’s song book, some of my choices being
very much about the storytelling aspects of the songs such as ‘Into My Arms’
and ‘People Ain’t No Good’. ‘Skeleton
Tree’ is in there, ‘Girl In Amber’.
I think my favourite Nick Cave album is ‘The Boatman’s Call’. I mean that has the most extraordinary love
song at the start of its tracks, you know with the opening line, ‘I don’t
believe in an interventionist God’ (‘Into My Arms’). I mean I use a lot of Nick Cave songs to open
shows because they are so provocative, enigmatic and dark. As my sister says you never choose songs that
are going to be very easy and pleasing to the audience, why are you doing that
to yourself, Camille? But I definitely
choose something that makes them question what is that show about or what is
that song about. Also that particular
album has some of the finest love songs ever written, ‘Brompton Oratory’,
‘People Ain’t No Good’ and ‘(Are You) The One That I’ve Been Waiting For?’ My two favourite albums are ‘Blood On The
Tracks’ by Bob Dylan and Nick Cave’s ‘The Boatman’s Call’. They happen to both be about the break ups of
relationships. Dylan’s album came
towards the end of his relationship with Sara and Cave’s album explored his
relationships with his wife and P.J. Harvey in some respects. So I don’t know why I have zoned in on them
but they’re the ones that have moved me the most. Then there’s the wonderful album to Cave’s
wife, Susie, ‘No More Shall We Part’, which has ‘God Is In The House’ on it and
‘Darker with the Day’, which is one of my favourite songs. I have only recently had the courage to
perform that song… Well, not the courage, it’s not a big thing to sing someone
else’s song but I was scared of messing it up.
I am glad that I had the confidence to sing it. Some of those songs only come to life when
you are singing in front of an audience.
I have always tried to do ‘Brompton Oratory’ in front of people but I
think it’s more of a recording song than a live song for me. I think when you perform Nick Cave’s work,
it’s important to find the different parts or guises that he represents. You know, the preacher, the dark demonic side,
the religious side, the lover, the vulnerable man and represent each of them as
fully as I can. So there will be a lot
of narrative stuff but then of course, you can do songs like ‘Jubilee Street’
and ‘There She Goes, My Beautiful World’.
Also you ask if any singers I’ve covered have ever commented on my
interpretations? I did meet Nick Cave,
he was very nice and he said,’ I hear you’ve done my stuff’. I can’t really remember if he thought it was
good or not as I think I was so freaked out, but he was very kind to me. I remember we were having dinner with Shane
McGowan and he said, ‘Oh come on, Camille, sing us one of your songs’ but of
course, I wouldn’t. I couldn’t even open
my mouth. Other people? I don’t know actually, I mean other than the
wonderful Dillie Keane who wrote ‘Look Mummy, No Hands’, which is one of my
favourite songs. She has come to see me
several times and really said how much she loved it, which meant so much to me. Then at one point, I worked with Earl Slick
on a Yoko Ono gig, he had previously worked with John Lennon and David Bowie
and he told me that he thought they would have loved the way I interpret
songs. I never go searching to find out
what the artists I cover think of my interpretations because I am too terrified
to know. I think just keep your idols
right there in the corner well respected and do not go near them. Even though Cave’s been lovely to me, I just
think I’d be too nervous to know what he thinks… I do want him and the other artists to know
that I respect what they do and that I am really grateful to be able to perform
their songs. That’s another thing, I am
putting myself on the line here doing a Nick Cave show because I am sure that I
will get his followers and we’ll see what they think of it. But I am excited to bring it to Wilton’s
Music Hall. It’s one of my favourite
venues in the world. I was delighted
when we did our first show, ‘Brel’ there, reading that same weekend in the
‘Evening Standard’ that Cate Blanchett’s favourite venue was Wilton’s Music
Hall! It’s an amazing, very intimate
space. I mean we make a choice of going
there. You can always play far bigger
venues to make your money back but I think at this moment in my life, I just
want the audience and myself as a performer to have a magical time. I am very lucky that they have opened their
doors to us and we have returned there a few times. I certainly know that the audience regularly
express how much they love the venue when I meet them afterwards. The performance space also contributes to the
evening and how it is experience by the audience and I, which is probably what
led to me being in the Spiegeltent for so many years. So let’s hope that the Cave show goes well
and that you enjoy it.
Finally, what else do you have planned for the
future? Are there any other goals that
you would like to achieve?
Um, my plans for the future? Oh
my God! The thing I’ve never really done
is write my own stuff. I suppose I am a
bit terrified of doing that. After
singing the works of such great musicians, I ask myself, can I even do anything
as good as that? That is something I
will have to do and other than that we will tour the Nick Cave show. We are heading off to New Zealand now (gigs
have been performed) and we are going to bring it to Edinburgh. Probably bring ‘The Rape of Lucrece’ back on
the road with the Gate Theatre Dublin. I am
always trying to keep up with the admin side of what I am doing and trying to
sort out my emails. That’s why you will
never hear from me all the time. I am
just trying to keep on top of that and once that’s finished, I feel as though I
can work on the next project. I mean there’s
always something in the pipeline.
Luckily, people come along and say, ‘oh, do you want to do a film or do
you want to do a play?’ I would love to
work with dancers. I am going to be
doing a charity gig for the homeless, which is really important to me because
sometimes, I don’t have the money to give back but I think through music at
least, we can help and do something different.
Taking a break to record, I get into the studio and sometimes, you
forget you are on the road and you forget to do those things but taking some
time just to look at learning new music and be inspired. Also going to other people’s gigs and really
enjoying theirs. So I hope that makes
sense and thank you so much again for asking these questions, I really
appreciate it. Thank you.
Afterword
My thanks to Camille O’Sullivan for allowing me
to interview her, whilst she continues to prepare and tour her ‘Cave’ show.
Camille O’Sullivan has a website where you can
learn more about her work and touring activities. Also there are links to her performances on
the website:
Camille O’Sullivan is coming to the Wilton’s
Music Hall in April 2019 and the Union Chapel in November 2019, 1st
and 2nd November 2019:
The songs and other works mentioned in this
interview are copyright to their respective owners and I have used Nick Cave’s
lyrics without permission and will remove them if necessary. I have used them to explore the creative
process involved in the interpretation of other artist’s songs. I recommend that you all listen to Nick Cave
and his work. He has a website:
‘The Rape of Lucrece’ is available from the
Royal Shakespeare Company’s website and from other suppliers and is lovely:
Photos.
Camille O'Sullivan
Camille O'Sullivan with the eponymous Rabbit.
Barry Watt – 22nd March 2019
