PJ Harvey & John Parish no compromise - FILTER Magazine

For Dance Hall at Louse Point, I’ve heard the
music you’d written for a production of Hamlet
was the spark for the collaboration.
John Parish: I’d gotten a job at a college, and the
head of the performing arts department wanted to do a
radical production of Hamlet and he asked me to write
a score for it. It was the first time I’d been able to write
music outside of a traditional band form. I didn’t have
to write a three-and-a-half-minute song with words and
it didn’t have to fit with drums, guitars and bass. It was
so different from anything I’d done before; I didn’t
even know how to judge it. So the first person I played
it to was Polly to get her take on it. She immediately
was incredibly enthusiastic. A couple months later she
called me and said, “Look, I’m still listening to this stuff
all the time; I absolutely love it. Would you write me
some music like this that I could put words to”
PJ Harvey: I came away from that and said, “If you
write me 12 pieces of music, along the lines of what
you’ve done for Hamlet, I really think we could do
something special,” and that’s how it started. And
then, years later, I stumbled across “Black Hearted
Love,” which was a song that John and I had made
together and not done anything with. I thought, “This
is great,” and I rang him up and said, “John, we have
to write another body of work to go along with ‘Black
Hearted Love’ and it’s about time we do a follow-up
to Dance Hall.”
What new directions did you try to explore on
A Man, A Woman Walked By
Harvey: Vocally and lyrically, I wanted to explore different
ways of writing; likewise, I was urging John to
be very experimental with the music and to not repeat
what we’d done before. In order to strengthen the
music, lyrically and melodically, I spend a bit of time
seeing what atmosphere the music’s suggesting and that
will point me in a direction with the nature of the lyric,
but also the way to sing it and the melody to choose.
Parish: Neither of us was interested in making the
same record over again. I think I probably wrote 16
pieces of music and Polly wrote about a dozen lyrics
and we ended up with 10 songs that we were happy
with. There’s no persuasion and really no compromise
in what we work on. We have a lot of trust and respect
for what each other does. We only work on things that
we’re absolutely both completely committed to.
On the title track there’s a rather aggressive
lyric, “Now it’s my turn to laugh, I’m going to
stick it up your fucking ass.” What inspired
that line
Harvey: The sheer energy and enjoyment of the music
is where it starts. I wish you could hear the music on its
own because it’s utterly insane and it was quite a while
before I could find the lyric and melody to match that
piece of music that John gave me. I find it hilarious and
very entertaining and I love singing it. But likewise,
as with any of the gentle songs, like “The Soldier” or
“Cracks in the Canvas,” it should also be about the
sheer celebration of being alive.
Parish: Well, I was a bit shocked. I’m always surprised
when I hear whatever lyrics or vocals she’s done on the
tracks, because I’m used to hearing them as instrumentals
and obviously it changes the focus of the piece. That
piece was particularly dynamic and surprising. I had to
listen to it a few times to understand what was going
on, but then I completely fell in love with it. It’s just a
fantastic performance, thoroughly engaging and works
on different levels for me—it’s funny, rude, aggressive,
dynamic. I just think it’s a fantastic vocal.
Can you talk about influences
Harvey: I was first introduced to Nick Cave and the
Bad Seeds by John, actually, when I was about 17, and
I’d never heard them before and I can remember it
being a huge turning point in my life because I heard
this music that was everything I had ever wanted to
make. I also felt that feeling when I first heard Captain
Beefheart and I also felt it when I first heard Howling
Wolf and the Pixies.
Parish: Well, Captain Beefheart, for sure. I guess
I’d have to say Led Zeppelin because they were very
important to me growing up; that was what I listened to
in my teenage years. I was such a fan of John Bonham’s
drumming. I think that the feel they had behind their
music is very important to the feel that I’ve tried to
put into my own music. And, more recently over the
last decade or 15 years, it’s been Howe Gelb of Giant
Sand.
Has your relationship with each other changed
over the years
Parish: It’s more grown than changed. We connected
from when we first met and trusted each other and
that’s only grown as we’ve got older and our careers
have developed. We’re very fortunate to have had each
other to turn to for advice. We’re close personal friends
as well and we’ve got this shared history. It’s great to
have this relationship that develops over time and it’s
just gotten stronger as we’ve gotten older.
Harvey: We have the same feel, for want of a better
word. The way the music works through us and our
souls or whatever you like to call it, it comes out
sounding of a certain feeling; it has a certain soul to it.
We get along as friends because of this similarity in soul,
which comes through music, too. F
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