http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jh ... rall23.xml
Here's as much as my scanner could reproduce of the print version ( in a tabloid size supplement ) of this -
The main photos are credited to Bruce Weber.
Sunday Telegraph ( London)
Lady gets the blues
(Filed: 23/07/2006)
Diana Krall is the smoky-voiced pin-up girl of the jazz world, but she's not easy listening - nor easy company.
Nigel Ferndale meets the third Mrs Elvis Costello
For entirely selfish reasons I have been trying hard to like Diana Krall. I go to see her in concert, you see. I have all her albums. And the next time I go to see her in concert, or play one of her albums, I don't want to have it ruined by a voice in my head saying: 'What a cow.' But from the moment she turned up late, pointedly ignored me while she poured herself a coffee, and then greeted me with a crusher handshake, the world's bestselling jazz singer and pianist has been in a foul mood. Ominously, when I try to melt the permafrost by congratulating her on her pregnancy (her first, at 41, baby due in December) and asking her the standard jokey questions about whether she has developed any odd cravings or caught herself behaving erratically, she glowers at me, actually glowers, and says in a flat voice: 'You might just find out.'
After five minutes of her blocking my questions with defensive, one-sentence answers delivered in a Canadian monotone, I wonder if I shouldn't just ask if she wants to reschedule. Then I remember how tight her schedule is: she flew into London from LA last night to begin a three-week tour of Europe - so jetlag might partly account for her charmlessness. So I smile and say: 'You don't like being interviewed much, do you?' It seems to help. She sighs: 'I don't like talking about myself.'
Does talking about Diana Krall make Diana Krall feel self-conscious? Silence. 'It's not my favourite thing to do. It's boring.' More silence. 'I'm quite shy.' (The default excuse of rude people.) 'And people have preconceptions about me.'
Such as? 'You know, from the photographs.'
She refers to the album sleeves that made her the poster girl of the jazz world: Diana in tulle by moonlight; Diana barefoot and swathed in serape on the shore; Diana all sultry, blonde and puffy-lipped in a little black dress that shows off her long legs (she's 5ft 8in). She is a seriously talented jazz pianist. She wins Grammies. She gets asked to play at the White House. Did she worry that she might be taken less seriously because of those photographs? 'I never thought of that. My records always sell. My tours always sell out. I think I deserve more credit for that. I'm not saying the pictures didn't help. But just because you have a pretty girl in a pretty dress it's not going to change people's minds about whether they like your music or not. I had to apologise for those record covers for a while. I won't do that any more. Get over it, people. That's petty stuff.'
Now this is more like it; something approaching passion; and delivered in a torrent, with the words almost eliding one into the other. Not wanting her to lose momentum, I suggest that, anyway, the photographs complement the music. 'Yeah, there is a sexuality to the music. It's sexy.'
They complement her singing voice, too. She shrugs. 'Yeah, the smoky voice, Scotch and cigarettes, all that crap.' I'm beginning to feel some sympathy for her, having to endure such clichés - because the point about Diana Krall's singing voice is that it is not clichéd. It is completely original, partly because of its androgyny and almost tenor depth, and partly to do with a crack it has. It is husky, slow-burning, breathy. And her phrasing manages to be both languid and supple: bending notes, stretching them expressively, fading to a whisper. It's as subtle as dark chocolate. It's like, yes, Scotch and cigarettes, all that crap. I'll stop now.
And yet … some jazz purists talk dismissively of 'The Diana Krall crowd', meaning musical tourists who would shy away from John Coltrane, Charlie Mingus or Thelonious Monk. The reason she has sold millions of records, they sniff, is that her music is unchallenging. But anyone who thinks her music bland and easy just isn't listening. Part of the snobbery, I suspect, might have arisen because she made her name recording popular standards. It was not until her third album, a homage to the Nat King Cole Trio recorded in 1996, that she really hit her stride. Since then she has become a peerless interpreter of the likes of Gershwin, Cole Porter and Bacharach, imbuing their slow songs with a bluesy swing, or bringing an unexpected melancholy to their more upbeat numbers. 'I never tried to copy anyone vocally,' she says. 'People have compared me to Peggy Lee but, actually, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong were much more of an influence. I was born listening to Bing Crosby, I knew all the lyrics by heart by the time I was 15. It sounds boring and nerdy but there was something about his phrasing that I loved. I felt I had a head start.'
The place she was born listening to Bing was Nanaimo, British Columbia. Her father was an accountant and a keen amateur stride pianist. I ask if it's true she was playing the piano at four? 'Bout then, yeah.' And was that because she had pushy parents? 'No, they didn't push. My piano teacher played boogie woogie piano for me after my lessons and I loved it. I can still see myself as a four-year-old looking forward to that. I knew already that I had a feel for swing music, music that had that …' She clicks her fingers three times.
How did she stay focused on jazz when her peers at school were getting into rock and pop? 'Well, I was into that, too. I listened to bands with my friends. But I heard a jazz concert and joined a jazz band at school and started improvising when I was around 13. I began studying chord structures and jazz theory. Then I heard Ray Brown play and that was it for me …' Krall was certainly precocious. At 17 she won a scholarship to study piano at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston but left after 18 months when she was 'discovered' by her hero, the bassist Ray Brown (once married to Ella Fitzgerald). He was so impressed, he persuaded her to move to LA and ask the jazz pianist Jimmy Rowles (who used to accompany Billie Holiday) for lessons. 'I quit college and knocked on Jimmy Rowles's door,' Krall recalls. 'By myself. He said he didn't teach.
I wouldn't accept no for an answer. He said you can come over, but I don't know what I'm going to teach you.'
What did he teach her? 'Everything musically, but it's important to hang out with people like that and absorb the atmosphere and listen to the stories; listen to their struggles. Same thing when I hung out with Oscar Peterson last year. We told stories and listened to his records. He asked me to play with him and I thought: ''Try not to freak out, enjoy the moment." We ended up singing Nat Cole songs together and it was one of the highlights of my life. What can I say? I wanted to tell my grandkids I'd played with Oscar Peterson.'
Did he rate her as a pianist? 'Yeah.' For the first time in the interview she smiles.
We talk about her new album From This Moment On. I tell her I like the way she slowed down one of the tracks, Irving Berlin's 'Isn't this a Lovely Day'; it was as if hearing the words for the first time. 'Thank you.' She's good at breathing new life into familiar songs, I add. 'So I'm told.'
Actually, it is unfair to characterise Krall merely as an interpreter of standards. In 2004 she moved into more introspective territory with the release of The Girl in the Other Room. There was no picture of her smouldering on the cover. For the most part, Krall co-wrote the songs with her husband, Elvis Costello. They had married in December 2003 - a first marriage for her, a third for him - the wedding taking place on the estate of their friend Sir Elton John.
When I ask if she had tried to reinvent herself with that album she shakes her head. 'It wasn't a conscious effort. I couldn't do anything else. I'd lost my mother.' Her mother had died of cancer in 2002. 'I'd also lost my mentor Ray Brown and my friend Rosemary Clooney. It was the loss of a parent followed by the loss of a father and mother figure. I was devastated. I was not feeling like singing 'Deed I do' [one of her more upbeat songs].'
Does she find it painful to listen to that album now? 'I don't listen to any of my records again, ever. It's cathartic finishing them, then I don't want to hear them again. There are some songs I never play live because if I'm not in the mood, I can't lie that I am. I can't be forced to do something I don't want to do.'
No kidding. Perhaps her reluctance to enter into the spirit of this interview is just that, an inability to lie. And yet she's a performer. You'd imagine she could fake being polite for the sake of PR. Apparently not. 'There's this big joke about 'Peel me a Grape',' she continues, referring to one of her more flirtatious songs. 'People always shout it out, requesting it. I haven't heard that song in six years. I just can't do it. Not feeling that. A lot of The Girl in the Other Room songs I've put to one side, too.'
Working with her husband; what was that like? 'It was fun writing with him. It worked well.' Had she listened to his songs as a teenager? 'I remember hearing 'Watching the Detectives' on the radio.'
Her husband is someone who has transcended genres, I note: punk, folk, country and western, classical, jazz. 'Uh-huh.' I guess being pigeon-holed is the curse of the artist? 'Uh-huh.' Does she feel frustrated when fans want her to keep covering the standards? 'Uh-huh.'
It occurs to me that her prickly manner might be a compensation for accusations that her music is bland. This might also explain the way she constantly dismisses herself as boring, as a topic of conversation, at least But it could also be that she finds the concept of interviews hypocritical, especially after the annoying time she had a few years ago when her name was linked to Clint Eastwood, Hollywood's biggest jazz fan. Both denied there was anything going on. When she is not in the mood, she is not in the mood, it seems. But what about when she is due to give a performance? 'I'm never not in the mood when I'm performing. Ever. I might feel tired but as soon as I hit the first note I'm in the mood. I never feel negative about performing, unless I have to perform at a loud car show. When people are talking. That is excruciating.'
She starts doodling on a notepad. 'You know,' she says without looking up, picking up the thread of an earlier conversation. 'I never got bored reinterpreting jazz standards. Something like 'My Funny Valentine' you can pull apart and put back a million different ways. You can take any song and improvise.'
In terms of improvisation, I say, drugs have always played a significant role in jazz. 'Well, that applies to the history of anything, art, literature, anything.'
Yes, but especially with jazz improvisation in the 1950s and 60s … 'Well, whatever worked for you.' Has that ever worked for her? 'Whatever works, as long as you get what you want in the end and don't die in the process …' She sighs impatiently, her lightening mood swinging back to darkness. 'I'm not having to deal with a lot of the things those artists had to deal with.'
I guess she has more of a safety net than the jazz stars of the 50s and 60s had. Managers, advisers, assistants. Presumably, she has an entourage with her? 'I don't travel with personal trainers and personal chefs, if that's what you mean. I have a crew and I have a hair and make-up person. Don't have her with me at the moment, as you can probably tell. [Her hair is gathered and she doesn't appear to be wearing make up]. I buy my own clothes. But I do have people who look after me, yeah. People who make sure I'm not getting stressed out.'
Her quartet is far too distinguished to come under the heading 'entourage', by the way: drummer Jeff Hamilton, bass player John Clayton and guitarist Anthony Wilson all being legendary. Do they bow to her fame? 'No, they keep me in my line. They are my big brothers. They've known me for years. There's no attitude or ego. I was never a big ego. I was always more on the insecure side.' Insecure in what way? Presumably she doesn't have insecurities about her looks? 'Of course. Of course I do. There will be times when I wake up and look like shit.'
So she isn't a narcissist? Long pause. 'I don't know.' It would be understandable, being photographed all the time. 'I'm not being photographed all the time. I'm not being photographed all the time. My photo shoots are one day.'
So she's what? Well adjusted? 'I'm fairly grounded, but always less neurotic when I'm playing. If I don't play I end up internalising things … It has nowhere to go.'
If she was in a prison cell without a piano would she go mad? 'Probably.'
I ask if her husband is with her for this tour. 'He and I just played in Aspen together. I played a show one night and he played the next, so we saw each other for two days then. Now I won't see him for a month … But we love what we're doing. We love our tours. It's hard being apart, but we talk on the phone every day, even when there is an eight-hour time difference.'
Is her husband going to be there for the birth? 'I certainly hope so!' Well, some fathers are squeamish. 'Oh, I see. I thought you meant in the same town.' She rubs her arms and shivers. 'This air con… I'm a bit chilly…' It's time to say goodbye. One crushing handshake later I sit back down and reflect ruefully on the old adage: never meet your heroes. I make some notes and get up to leave. It is then I notice the pad she had been doodling on. It is only a bit of cross-hatching and a few loops but, hey, it is Diana Krall's cross-hatching, Diana Krall's loops. I tear off the top sheet and slip it into my pocket.
# Diana Krall's album 'From This Moment On' is released on September 11 on Verve Records
