Iconic chanteuse Cyndi Lauper is heading to Sydney for the first time since she stole the show at the 2008 Mardi Gras Party. She speaks to Garrett Bithell about her recent blues album, her love for drag queens, and gay rights.
I had forgotten about Cyndi Lauper’s voice. It’s that notorious New York City accent that seems to particularly percolate in the borough of Queens, where indeed Lauper was born in Ozone Park. In a way, she sounds like a character in the now-defunct American sitcom The Nanny – all drawn-out vowels and nasal sounds. It’s not quite Brooklyn, Frankie Valli-thick, but it’s on the way.
This distinctive way of sounding-out words seems to become more exaggerated when Lauper talks about the blues – that glorious, melancholy, quintessentially American style of music that originated in the Deep South at the end of the 19th century as vivid narrative ballads about the trials of African-American life. Indeed Lauper’s most recent album, Memphis Blues, released last year, is a collection of blues covers and features appearances by seminal artists such as BB King, Jonny Lang, Allen Toussaint, Ann Peebles and Charlie Musselwhite.
“I’ve wanted to do a blues record for eight years,” Lauper tells SX. “I figured I might as well do it now while I still have teeth in my neck.”
That sensual metaphor is perfect for the blues – a musical style that, perhaps more than any other, is designed to evoke both pleasure and pain. “The way everything has been going, especially in my country, people have got the blues,” Lauper says. “Things are happening – it’s tough out there.
“The best thing about the blues is the temporal thing, and I thought to reach out to people, strike a chord in their hearts and where it hurts, and then lift them up with spirit and humour, would be a good thing to do.”
Produced by Scott Bomar and mixed by long-time collaborator William Wittman, Memphis Blues bristles with the kind of energy that defined the hit singles invented on the fly at Stax Records – the historic and spiritual prototype for Electraphonic – where musicians of multiple generations work side-by-side creating soul-driven anthems for the broken-hearted, the unrequited, the overlooked. As well as appearances from King, Lang and Toussaint, Memphis Blues session players include Stax veterans Lester Snell and Skip Pitts, and Hi Rhythm Section alumni Leroy Hodges and Howard Grimes, who cut their teeth recording with the likes of Issac Hayes and Al Green.
“It’s been an incredible experience for me,” Lauper, who actually sang in a Janis Joplin covers band in the 70s, raves. “I’m such a lucky devil to be able to go back to square one with these guys.”
Lauper is touring the country this month in support of Memphis Blues. When she was last in Sydney in 2008, she was the headline and final act at the Mardi Gras Party. She donned a yellow Marie Antoinette confection to sing ‘Same Ol’ Story from her album Bring Ya To The Brink, followed by a newly-remixed version of her 1983 classic ‘Girls Just Want To Have Fun’. Rumour has it that when Lauper turned up for her costume fitting prior to the performance, she was mortified by the fact it was yellow.
“Well I didn’t want to look like a big fat banana babe,” Lauper exclaims. “But it was fine – we worked it out so it was nice on me. I had such a great time – the guys, the dancers, and oh my god the wig was awesome!”
Suffice it to say, Lauper’s status as a gay icon is well-established. Her 1983 album She’s So Unusual was a magnet for the gays, who latched onto its camp, empowering anthems like moths to a flame(r). She has been performing at gay pride events since 1994 when she headlined the closing ceremony of the Gay Games in New York City. “I performed ‘Girls Just Want To Have Fun’ with what felt like a hundred drag queens,” Lauper laughs. “I was so amazed at their shoes and everything else, I couldn’t stop looking and forgot to count. I got a fat lip that night because I copped a headdress in the mouth!”
But Lauper was upset by the way the organisers treated the drag queens. “I noticed that on the Jumbotron [big screen], they weren’t showing any of the drag queens, and it really pissed me off,” she says. “So I decided I could do something about it – it they’re not going to show them, I will make these gays famous. I’m going to get to know them.”
Lauper is clearly a woman of her word, and has since become one of the most important and prolific gay rights activists in the world. In 2007, she created the True Colors Tour, an annual concert series that benefits the Human Rights Campaign and other GLBT organisations. It has featured influential artists such as Deborah Harry, The Dresden Dolls, Erasure, Rufus Wainwright, The Gossip, and Margaret Cho, who acted as MC.
Moreover, last year Lauper launched the Give a Damn campaign, which aims to rally straight people to stand up with the GLBT community to stop discrimination. Other big names included in the campaign are Whoopi Goldberg, Jason Mraz, Elton John, Judith Light, Cynthia Nixon, Kim Kardashian, Anna Paquin – who came out as bisexual – Ricky Martin, and Sharon and Kelly Osbourne.
“I’m in a country that says ‘oh, land of the free’! Excuse me, there’s a lot of subtext there,” Lauper says. “It’s not just land of the free – you have to read the small print. I have so many friends and family – they just want to be citizens. They were born here, so why can’t they be?”
Lauper also teamed up with Lady Gaga last year for the MAC Viva Glam campaign for AIDS awareness. The two were a match made in outlandish heaven. “She likes the artsy stuff like I do,” Lauper muses. “But she does her own thing. It’s performance art, which I appreciate. She’s like Grace Jones – but she’s also like Madonna and Bowie.
“That’s the job of any young artist though – to look at the world around them and take it in, figure it out, and translate it.”
Cyndi Lauper live in concert, State Theatre (Market Street, Sydney) on Thursday, March 31 and Friday, April 1. Bookings through ticketmaster.com.au or call 136 100.
Source: sxnews.gaynewsnetwork.com.au |
.jpg)
Manchester @ Bridgewater Hall – 20th June 2011
Vienna @ Vienna Jazz Festival – 15th July 2011
Hamburg @ Laeiszhalle – 18th July 2011
