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he first time I saw you play was at Glastonbury Festival in 1989, where you’d received a threat you would be shot. “Oh wow. You were part of those 100,000 people out there, with the cows in the next field. That was a really wild situation. Every song felt like it was 45 min- utes long. My whole sense of time and space was absolutely twisted because there was so much tension around. The police had just recommended I not do the show.”
That’s a fairly exclusive club you’ve joined. There can’t be many performers who can say, “I had a death threat too.”
“Ha ha ha. No, it was kind of insane. The other irony is, ten years before that I worked in Glastonbury in the summer as the wardrobe mistress for a local theatre production. They call them- selves Miracles At Glastonbury and they did the Mystery plays. And one of the girls I was with was like, ‘There’s this great rock festival. Let’s go see it.’ That was in ’79. And I wasn’t really into rock’n’roll. I don’t think I’d seen that Lou Reed concert yet that changed every- thing. I was like, ‘No, you go. I have to read poetry.’ So ten years later I’m headlining the festival. It’s amazing. I don’t know that I’ve ever told any journalist that before.”
Given the importance of Lou Reed in your career choice, when you performed with him at a concert in Prague, at the invi- tation of Václav Havel, did you want to send a postcard to your younger self and say, “You won’t believe where I am right now’”?
“Totally. Because from nineteen to twenty six I saw every show I could see by Lou Reed. And I’d go and watch him perform and there was this little voice in my mind going, ‘Go backstage. Go meet him.’ And I never worked up the courage. And over time, as it turns out, I met him on MTV. The most public meeting you could have. And… it’s kind of funny.”
[You can find the clip of their first meeting on YouTube. Suzanne clams up and collapses into bashful giggles like a compe- tition winner.]
“But he was really kind and sweet and he remembered me over time. So for seven years I wouldn’t go introduce myself to him but we ended up in this place – 2009 in Prague. Sometimes time takes care of those things for you.”
For want of a suitable closing question, what do you think people say about you when you’ve left the room?
“Either, ‘She’s nice.’ Or, ‘Isn’t she weird?’ The first one is kind of horrible. I was constantly being told by peers, family members, any- body: ‘You have weird ideas.’ ‘You’re so weird.’ So I’ve gotten used to that. But I’m weirder than I am nice.”
www.suzannevega.com F
Photo: George Holz
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