NoHoLa Magazine Interview

SOPHIE B. HAWKINS
Past Tense, Present Perfect
From Top 40 pop/rock star to indie iconoclast, Sophie B. Hawkins hits all the notes.
by Jamie Lauren

"I made $1200 at my yard sale," Sophie says, with childlike glee. 'It was amazing!"

Even more amazing considering she spent most of the day at the Rose Bowl, where she sang "The Star Spangled Banner" at an L.A. Galaxy soccer game. Sophie finds the anthem "poignant and potent. I might not always agree with what this country is doing, but I would fight for this country in wartime and I still feel very patriotic, so it's always very emotional."

Sophie has been busy, but it's the kind of busy she enjoys since being able to call her own shots as an independent artist. Besides the Galaxy game, she just headlined an event in Palm Springs, appeared on "The Chris Isaak Show," is involved in the "We Are Family" ensemble recording to benefit September 11th charities, is on her way to some shows in Virginia and has an upcoming (May 9) benefit locally for the Safe House charity at the El Rey Theatre. She's putting the final touches on her next album ("It's called 'Sweet Cantaloupe,'" she says delightedly, enunciating every syllable. "Isn't that sexy?!"), has 300 pages of a novel she hopes to complete within a year or two, and is working on a screenplay with manager/business partner Gigi Gaston, who, herself, is an accomplished screenwriter/director.

Longing to be a musician since an early age, Sophie obsessively began practicing drums at 14, learned a variety of instruments, found herself writing songs, and then shyly began performing in clubs around New York. "When I got signed, I suddenly had to do this whole promotion thing and it made me feel weird about myself," she recalls. "I had a hard time coping on the first two records for the amount of promotion I had to do versus how much I really just wanted to be an artist."

Sophie B. Hawkins shot to Top 40 fame in 1992 with the hit "Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover" from her debut Tongues and Tails album. Though seven record companies fought over her demo of the song, the winner, Columbia (soon to be bought by the Japanese Sony Corporation), leaned on Sophie to make some major changes. "They said I couldn't say the word 'Damn,' I had to say the word 'darn,'" she recounts in the documentary The Cream Will Rise. "I couldn't have 16 bars in the bridge, I couldn't have three verses, I couldn't say 'making love to her'... That song was such a struggle since the very beginning." Columbia tested the song in Europe, where it became a huge hit, and only then decided to support Tongues and Tails domestically.

Sophie's second album Whaler was released in 1994. The single "As I Lay Me Down" hit the charts, remaining in the Top 40 for 67 weeks, the longest running song in history. "I would get these hits right when the Japanese or whoever owned Sony were getting really mad. It was always like that. They called me their lucky charm. I would come up from behind, and they would say, 'We were just in deep shit and now you have this huge success and you're giving us a great name.'"

In spite of that, Sophie was treated with condescension by some record company executives and found they had a similar disregard for other artists. "You wouldn't want to walk into one of these meetings and hear how these people talk about people--even women who were selling platinum."

Sophie completed her third album Timbre in 1996, producing it herself. "I had asked Sony for many producers but they said no to all of them. 'No, they're too expensive; no, they don't want to work with you.' I think Sony knew they weren't going to put money into this album until they were sure there was a hit, and usually my hits were proven in Europe."

The song that clearly had Top 40 written all over it, "Lose Your Way," utilized a banjo. Sophie was asked to lose the banjo; she refused. Sophie was asked to glam up her image; she refused. Timbre sat on the shelf for years.

During that time, aspiring filmmaker Gigi Gaston, who met Sophie at dinner with friends and felt a good connection, joined Sophie on her cross-country tour, documenting the no-holds-barred performances, the turbulent behind-the-scenes family dynamics and the articulate, stream-of-consciousness thoughts of an obviously brilliant but sometimes troubled artist.

In October of 1998, while promoting the resulting documentary, The Cream Will Rise, Sophie played "Lose Your Way" on the air at a Florida radio station, asking people to call Sony in support of the song and the unreleased album. Word spread, and an international network of supporters bombarded Sony with e-mails, letters and phone calls from all over the world.

Sony finally released Timbre in July of 1999. As the single of "Lose Your Way" began to receive airplay, Sony suddenly did an about-face. "A lot of people told me that when Sony decided they were going to pull "Lose Your Way," the people in radio promotion, the people who actually play the songs, said, 'Why? That's our favorite song.'"

Sophie was unhappy with the situation and so was Sony. The split was both inevitable and, according to reports, amicable. In a video bio on the re-released version of Timbre, Gigi asks Sophie if producing was made harder on her because she was a woman. Sophie responds in the affirmative, adding, "Maybe it's because of the kind of woman I am."

When I ask, in that context, what kind of woman she would describe herself as, Sophie responds without hesitation. "I'm a part of nature more than a part of man. The metaphor is like the earth--there's so much abundance, so much naturalness, so much creativity. And as much as men are turned on by it, they often want to control it. They end up depleting it, and I don't want to be depleted. And since I'm not the earth, I can say no."

"I'm not turned off by men at all. I don't have that bitterness or fear," she says. "So when I'm not turned off by the corporate male mindset and can work with it, they think, 'She's willing to work with it and she's really great and she's doing all this, but how are we going to put our mark on her?'"

Sophie would see this occur in personal relationships as well. "There will always be a point where this happens. Like my first drum teacher, who was also my first lover. He was so supportive when I wanted to play drums, when I wanted to play vibraphone and marimba, but the minute I started writing songs, it was 'You have a shitty voice and you can't do that.' And a lot of people might say, 'Okay, if you say I suck, then I must suck.' I just said, 'Even if I do suck, I have to do this.' It was happening so naturally."

"What I never understood about it," says Sophie, "is that if he had supported me, he would have been with someone who made all this money, who made all these songs, who was a great person to be with, and who had an interesting lifestyle. I mean, what's really the problem there?" She poses the same question about the record company. "I'm much less of a problem technically than the drug addicts and the divas who cost so much money. I cost nothing! I sit in my studio at home writing, then I go out and perform whenever I'm asked. What is the problem?"

Sophie feels the record companies are shooting themselves in the foot by re-imaging artists to conform to a generic look and sound. "Why do you have to pay someone 20 million dollars to get lost? [referring to the Mariah Carey buyout] That means you're doing horrible business. In the '70s, they gave artists enough money to make the record and get them on the road. They sold trillions of records that they're still selling today. Carly Simon, Janis Ian--they barely wore makeup. They were just who they were, with their great voices and great bodies and great character. The labels didn't say, 'What's the demographic? What's the lowest common denominator? How can we overthink this to get the most out of our buck?' Greed will kill cultures. It will kill humanity."

Without a major label behind her, Sophie partnered with Cream documentarian Gigi Gaston, who had also become Sophie's manager and business partner, to create Trumpet Swan Productions. They signed on with the independent label Rykodisc (www.rykodisc.com) to re-release Timbre with a bonus CD of home tracks and videos. While the song "No Connection" feels as much like a Top 40 winner as "Lose Your Way," Sophie doesn't think it's possible yet for an independent artist to break the charts. "To have mainstream radio airplay and even visibility, I think you do need the big machine behind you still. Even Creed--whose popularity I heard was from their being a Christian band--didn't get the airplay til they were finally signed. And for me that used to be my bread and butter because I write these natural hits."

Sophie writes everything, from rap to folk to pop/rock to ballads. "And that's what singer/songwriters used to do," she says. "Look at James Taylor or John Denver. I would've thought John Denver was corny if I'd have heard him when I was younger, but I recently heard him on a compilation tape and I was so blown away by "Annie's Song." I listen to it every morning now. Here is a song that was a huge hit and you could tell it just came out of him, like my songs just come out of me." If Sony had supported "Lose Your Way," "it could have meant, in a sense, that songwriters were back," says Sophie. "And the fact that it was popular just on that simple production--it could have been so beautiful for the time."

Sophie names Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Beethoven and her mother ("because she was always singing") as some of her musical influences, and because she misses the soulful quality of the singers and the medium she grew up on, Sophie recently set up the record player she's had since she was a teenager and dug out the LPs she is grateful she saved. "Digital sounds like shit to me," she says. "A lot of people put up a fight, like Lenny Kravitz, because they wanted analog to remain a valid medium, but it's gone away. How many people, even at my yard sale, ask, 'Do you have records?' and I say, 'Yeah, but I'm not selling them. Are you crazy?' I think it's a better sound, and I think it's better for our bodies. When I have kids, I'm playing records."

Sophie is no technophile. She prefers writing on a typewriter rather than a computer, and getting her information from books rather than the Internet. "When the computer's on, to tell you the truth, it gives me a headache." But she does acknowledge the benefits of the Internet. "I love ProTools. I write acoustically on the piano, banjo, cello, whatever. Then when I'm at the point of recording, I turn on my computer and use ProTools and I can MP3 my tracks to mixers anywhere in the world. Since I don't have a record company, the ease of it and the money I'm saving is incredible. But the minute I'm finished, I'm so happy to turn off that computer."

Her Web site (www.sophiebhawkins.com), overseen by Web master Janice, includes not only news about Sophie, but information about environmental and animal rights issues dear to Sophie's heart. "It's great because my fan base is international, so the Internet has allowed us to communicate. But personally," she confides, "I just use the Internet to trade stocks."

Sophie credits her impressive investment portfolio to business partner Gigi, who taught her everything about investing and trading. "Gigi said, 'Why do you have business managers who spend all your money with nothing to show for it?' I was always scared to look and see if I had any money. Little did I know that if I'd looked, I would've seen that I had millions and it was all going out."

Sophie describes herself as a kamikaze investor. "I do it in pockets. I read everything, I see where everything is, I make decisions, then I leave it alone for however long I have to. I've created this incredible--well, it's more than a cushion. It's a self-propelling way to live. And it's not only about me. My dream is to be able to write huge checks to people who are saving animals and healing children and curing cancer."

Because she one day wants to create foundations to further these dreams, she realized how important it was that she learn to be an administrator. "Every two weeks, I sit down and really focus on business. It's something that's become nurturing to me. Everyone besides Gigi said, 'If you start keeping track of your accounts, you will not write songs anymore.' And the opposite is true. I'm so much more productive because I don't have that secret worry."

"People want creative people to be in their boundaries, and I think it's the mental blocks--'If you do this, you can't do that,'" Sophie says. "It's so much easier to do money than to do anything else. If you're good at music, then you're good at math. And if you can work a studio, then you can definitely work a file cabinet. People will use you up. You see it on the news, all the scams. If people aren't responsible for their own money, especially creative people, they could end up on the streets."

Sophie herself hopes to end up in Italy one day. "I know I'm going to do it," she says. "I like Napoli very much. I love Rome. I've heard about Capri being amazing. I like living by the sea. It's like a whole new life happens to you, so that's what I want to do when I'm 50. I want to have exhausted my thing here and then just totally begin again."

I tell Sophie she reminds me of the German actress Hanna Schygulla and I ask if she can see herself as a European actress. "I would do it in a second!" she exclaims. "I love Hanna Schygulla! I saw those movies in my 20s and I still love German movies because of that." She fell so in love with the 1997 German film, Aimee and Jaguar, she made a film reel and sent it to the director, Max Farberbock, who she hasn't heard anything of since. Sophie appeared in a film Gigi directed, Beyond the City Limits, but "the script was terrible. Gigi and the actors did a great job, but it was a horrible story. It's like a bad song. You cannot make a bad song good."

Sophie did enjoy her recent stint on "The Chris Isaak Show." "I thought it was going to be so awful and showbizzy, but it wasn't and I loved it. And I love him, he's so natural and really curious. I never had a friend in high school who did what I did or was interested in what I was interested in, and I felt like he was a friend in high school. He was great to be around and I just had fun."

Sophie finds she's having fun and enjoying life more in general. "I thought when I woke up this morning that I would have a heart attack if I was still as intense as I was at fourteen. Now I wake up pretty free and happy, with a sense of purpose and real joy. Whatever my destiny is, I'm definitely going to live it, because I don't think there are any blocks in that sense."

Age has mellowed her a bit, but Sophie also feels she's finally found the balance she'd always struggled for between the introverted nature of writing and the extroverted acts of performing and promotion--a balance that gives her the freedom and perspective to enjoy the simpler things in life, like a successful yard sale on an early Saturday morning.