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andrea
Niall Stokes:
As a band you took more responsibility with In Blue - you have a
greater level of input into the production and so on. Was that a strain
when you were doing it?
Andrea Corr:
Yes. I think every album has different strains and that probably was
the particular strain. Yet ironically with that the greatest joy of it,
too. The album started without us really knowing it. John said 'there's
this movie looking for a song'. And I said 'me and Caroline wrote this
song the other day' and I played it immediately on the piano to him. And
he said 'let's go into the studio and record'. That's how the album started.
Production-wise we started by Caroline playing the piano, I'd sing into
a little mike and we'd build around it. Then every time somebody wrote
a song we'd go into the studio and do that same thing. There was great
magic in that. And we'd great fun. It was very liberating - no quests for
hits, that kind of ludicrous stuff that bands have to deal with these days.
Ours was a haven without that. It was just music-making.
Presumably, it wasn't idyllic all the way?
It did get quite hairy when we
had everything brought up to a level where we felt it was as good as we
could get it. We listened and we got cold feet. Because producers exist
for a reason. We got scared because we thought we might have written the
best songs of our lives, yet they mightn't sound like the best songs of
our lives because of us trying our hands at producing them. So at the end
we go in the Mitchell Froom and said 'We're doubting ourselves here. Will
you come in and clean it and do some scrubbing here?'. So he did.
Is there rivalry between the different guys in the band in terms
of getting songs on a record?
No. Of course you love your songs,
but at the end of the day there's a sound to a record and it's almost like
blind faith, because you just know it fits with that makes a complete,
great album that has every element you want in there. You'd know if your
song wasn't as good or didn't fit.
Is there a song on In Blue that you're particular proud of?
There's something very frightening
to me about writing because it is purely an inspiration. Sometimes it's
happening and only I realise halfway through the verse what I'm writing
about. In that way it is really your gut coming out. It's the core of it.
It's the absolute essences of emotions. So I'm proud of 'No More Cry'.
It's exactly what I felt after Mum's death. I'm proud of them all though.
I'm proud of 'One Night'. I really love that. I think it's a beautiful
song that myself and Caroline wrote. 'Hurt Before'. And 'Somebody For Someone'
which we wrote as well. I know that even in the best of bands, people look
back on lyrics they're embarrassed about. And I certainly have them. But
on this album, I don't think I have. Words are such an inadequate form
of expression - but along with the music, they're magic. That's when it's
almost like a scream. When the marriage of that happens, it's really special.
I really like 'All In The Day' as well. It is about adolescence.
Were you a bit of a wild one in you adolescence?
To be honest I was, but I was
very lucky in my family. Because their wildness was looked at, but when
it came to me, my parents were very jaded with antics from the family,
so I got away with an awful lot. I did work at school, and I did very well.
But I had a great time also. I think Mummy and Daddy knew that I would
take care of business. I wasn't being a bad girl.
Only half bad!
Only being naughty.
What was the baddest thing you did at that stage in your life?
I can't say because those things
are very personal. There is one but I had to make that mistake and I don't
want to talk about it because the family will read it. But I drank long
before I was supposed to. That was fun. But we've all been wild. Jim was
very wild. We all had our moments. My hair was just wilder, I think. (laughs)
You went from school into the band. Do you ever regret that?
We started the band when we auditioned
for The Commitments. I was 15 then. And then we started to write and record
and we'd do that at night while I was at school. I could have gone to university,
but when I got my Leaving Cert results because the band was what I was
doing, there was nothing to celebrate other than 'you did very, very well'.
But I never had that moving-out-of-home stage. I never had a life on my
own. I moved with the band. It's only in the last year that I've lived
on my own. It would always have been music or drama or English for me.
But I do think I missed that college time, moving out of your home and
everything like that. Having said that I am aware that I have had a lot
more of a dramatic education in this very weird world we live in, than
I would have had elsewhere.
Is the fact that it is weird hard to deal with?
Everybody gets used to the situation
they're in. And I'm such a lucky person to be able to do this around the
world, to sing to all these people who love our music, and to really feel
it. Never to be dishonest in your music is very gratifying thing. God knows
why I got a chance to express my feelings. Everybody's got feelings. But
I did and it's a very privileged situation to be in. But there's the other
side - that I'm part of the family that are always together. I'm 26 and
I'm still the baby.
That's an interesting and different thing about this group.
We often go 'Jesus, we're nuts
aren't we? Is there something wrong with us? Is everybody else seeing the
picture of this odd thing and we're not seeing it because we're engulfed
in it?'. But our magic is us, together, as musicians and we've great strength
together. We have strength to be able to deal with almost every situation.
I found watching the Williams sisters playing tennis quite an insight into
what we might look like.
Do you fight in a particular way?
I can be so defensive. All of
us take our turns. We do fight. But we have great fun as well. We have
learned through experience that happened last year, when our mother died,
to really respect each other as individuals. We actually have a good time
together now, but the first years were very hard. Forgiven Not Forgotten
was released, all of a sudden we were constantly out on the road, doing
promotions, soul-destroying tours, and, you know, we've always been pushing
our own trolley. And we still are. It does not come easy to us. We get
blessed with a package of, "Hey listen if David Foster produces your album
it's going to be 'Yeeees!'," but no, we push that flipping trolley wherever
we go, doing it our own way! All the plans that the record company would
come up with like 'put this package together, it's gonna be it' - it never
works. So now we're in a brilliant situation, where they leave it to us,
because that's what works best. And, that's a good really, because it's
actually defying the manufacturing, marketing, saturation thing that's
happening at the moment, especially in pop music.
What was the low point in promoting that first album?
The thing is the low point in
retrospect is actually the high point because if we had made it in America
with Forgiven Not Forgotten, I don't think we'd be together now. We wouldn't
have been grown up enough - or I certainly wouldn't have been grown up
enough - to deal with it. Mentally we wouldn't have felt worthy of it.
And I think - you meet musicians or people in the show business who have
an attitude who are egotistical, in your face - an awful lot of it has
to do with not feeling worthy. It happened too much too quickly, they don't
feel they deserve it. And so they're going around everywhere going 'F**k
you! I deserve it!', and 'I'm awesome' and inside they feel 'I'm not worthy'.
So I think that we would have lost it, you know.
In Ireland there was this myth that the Corrs were a manufactured
group.
How do you manufacture a family?
Does somebody get into the lab with some test tubes and say 'I hope she
plays the violin, and he plays the piano….'? Everything we do is honest.
Everything I sing and everything the band plays is honest. It's us. It's
not somebody else. It's not manufactured. What does it matter if people
say that? Just listen to the music.
At the same time it must hurt.
I tell you it would hurt if it
were true. If knew deep down it was true then I'd be going 'Mmmmmm', you
know. And sometimes things hurt if it would affect our parents. And sometimes
I get hurt for the fact that I know how much we've worked. I know how much
Sharon and Caroline and Jim have worked, and I look at them, and I go -
how dare some journalist say that about people who have worked so hard?!
You were quoted somewhere as saying you would give it all up for
love.
That's complete crap. We fought
that. We fought so many of them you know. But that's not true. It's absolutely
pathetic. What would I be doing this for if that was the way I really felt?
God, what a pathetic character they must sometimes portray.
There must be a point where you feel some kind of despair about the
way in which the media operates.
It's the nature of it. There's
been so much nonsense written about me that anybody with an ounce of intelligence
would actually have deduced it's got to be crap. But you know, I really
don't mind. My friends get on the phone and they laugh you know, and I
just get on with it. (laughs) A very, very funny thing happened, I was
lying on my bed, and I have this skylight above my head, and it was one
of those special mornings and all the windows were opened, and it was so
beautiful and I was lying there, and the phone rings, and the answering
machine was on, right. And it's my best friend and she goes "Andrea, Andrea
pick up the phone!" And so I run downstairs and pick up the phone and say
says "Did you see The Sun?", and I said "yes it's so beautiful." (laughs)
And the moral of the story is once I know my friends and the people
that care about me and love me know me- and once I know deep in my heart
when I go to bed at night what type of person I am - then I am okay with
that.
So tell me about working with Mutt Lange? Were you intimidated?
Yes, well you see we'd met, and
he really liked our music. And he suggested we might try and write a song
together. And so I went to Switzerland and we wrote "Breathless". And I
remember the night I got in, he is such a gentle, lovely, lovely man -
but I just wanted to go to my room. Because as I was telling you before
I don't know if I can write a song until it happens. And so I'm kind of
feeling empty, going - what's going to happen here? Is it going to happen?
Will I be remotely inspired by his chords?, you know. I mightn't be! I
don't know if I was as open as I probably should be - but then you've got
to do what's natural to you.
How did the song come to you?
Well I had barely arrived when
he started to play the chords, right. He's a serious worker and he wanted
to get straight down to it! He was going 'You want to do this now?' And
I was going 'Think!', you know. And I'm just petrified, I can't hear music
and I'm wondering does he expect me to start going (sings) "Yeah!"? I'm
not that confident. I like to go away and write on my own, to be honest
rather than sit with a stranger who is so confident. I felt very self-conscious
and very shy. So he let me go to bed. "Maybe we'll start in the morning,
okay?" And I want to bed thinking what am I doing here? Then the next day
luckily the sun came out, it was a lovely day and we started again, and
he hit the chords and he was humming melodies and stuff like that. Usually
I let somebody the chords and I would write the melody of 'Breathless'.
Then I changed it around. It was just an odd way for me to work. I don't
want to ruin people's feelings for songs though. It sounds kind of contrived
but people write that way.
Tell me where you'll be in 10 years' time?
I don't know. I'm a woman so there
is kind of an obvious route. But it won't be obvious, I don't think anything's
ever been obvious with me but I'll probably have quite a different existence
still. 'Cause I think this lifestyle has made me a little more bohemian
than the average or what I could have been, if I had been just living in
Dundalk. So I don't think I'll be able to be curtailed, I need somebody
very liberated. Now I don't mean on a fidelity level, I completely believe
in that. I suppose there's marriage and children but I'll still be doing
something artistic. But I don't know. So many people end up on paths they
never had an idea they'd be on you know. In 10 years' time I'll be 36 -
I'll probably still be writing. I won't be performing, as in singing. Maybe
I'll act, but only if I was good because I despise the idea of singer-turned-actress…..I
think it's an insult to the people who learn it. At the same time I would
like to scratch somebody else's feelings as well as my own. Getting up
on stage takes so much out of me because I'm expressing me, right? Expressing
somebody else's thoughts would be so liberating, like climbing into somebody
else's body and going through their emotions. I would like to do that.
But who knows?
Might you stick with life because it's addictive?
Maybe. But I think the life takes
an awful lot out of women, more so than it does with men. I know that it
takes an awful lot out of me. And so I should probably be chilling out
a bit more as an individual and doing different things at that stage, maybe
just writing and recording albums.. If there are still songs in us to sing
we more than likely will. And writing and having them sung by other people.
But it's so intense, so intense. I don't know. I've done this for 10 years.
Another 10 years? I feel a little abnormal already but another 10 years
on? I don't know if I could do it..
What's the summit of your ambition then?
The summit of my ambition? I very
much look to today to be honest. And certainly I know now that I'm not
immortal, so I might as well just love for today. Everyday has something
very special to offer and in that way, life is so wonderful and magic.
Once your heart is open, you'll go along the right path. You'll have opportunities
that you fall into naturally because you didn't do them selfishly, you
did it because it felt right. I rally believe - I live for today.
A quick couple of other….
I'd like to have babies that's
for sure. I really don't want to go through my life without fulfilling
that potential. It's probably not the summit of my ambitions, it's not
a tabloid thing., "Andrea Wants To Have Babies!!!" But as a woman and given
that we've more developed than other animals, that's one thing I have to
fulfil. A woman's body is set in a way that absolutely miraculous and I
have to find out about it. And then the combination of the brain and heart
and the body is just - I've got to explore that. I've got to do that at
some stage.
How do you respond to being selected as the most beautiful woman
in the world?
It's very flattering. It was nice
when I heard about it because I felt so horrible on that day. Because often
you feel horrible, it's the most ridiculous thing. I don't see it myself
that way, not at all, but I think it's very nice that it was said.
Okay. Ridiculous last question. What do you cook for yourself, or
if you're having people around for dinner?
I just got a new kitchen that's
so beautiful. So I did loads of stuff, the week that I had a night off.
I had dinner parties practically every night, like I had to christen the
home with a roast chicken, try to do it like Mummy did. And I cook sea
bass really well. That would be my favourite.
Give us the recipe.
The recipe! (laughs) I
do see the sea bass whole. I like to include the head and tail, I'm not
squeamish at all, I just love it. It's probably not loving it in people's
mind if I'm eating it but there you go! You put olive oil on the bottom
of the dish. Put the whole sea bass in, just score it along, put more olive
over it and season with sale & pepper. It's really simple. For a change
you can stuff some garlic or chillies inside the fish. Maybe out a whole
bulb of garlic beside it. Cut the top off the garlic and pour olive oil
on it and roast that. And then what do I do with that? I do these great
roast potatoes so they can be done at the same time - only they go in earlier.
Potatoes, which are peeled, olive oil, salt and pepper, thyme and loads
of pepper, I love black pepper. Vegetables? I'd probably do fennel with
the fish but I do this great stir-fry - my mother used to do this as well.
So if I was doing the roast chicken, stir-fried cabbage with cumin is fantastic.
(End of Andrea Interview)