The endlessly fascinating Miss Fiona Apple graces the pages of Interview Magazine this month, where she opens up to editor Matt Diehl about her upcoming album, The Idler Wheel…, her writing process, why she takes so long to record between albums, self-parenting, and…Lana Del Rey.
You must read the full interview over at Interview, but I’ve pulled a few quotes that specifically stuck out below.
On the idea that her writing always begins with “tragedy”…
There sort of has to be a problem in order to get anywhere. You know, I’ve always thought that it would be really funny if somebody made a romantic comedy where absolutely everything went well from beginning to end. Every time you thought, “Oh, this is the part where things are going to go wrong,” everything would just go great. That would be a novelty. But most of the time you need something to fight against.
On self-abusing while onstage…
I just tend to do things to myself that I don’t realize I’m doing. Sometimes I bite my lip so that it splits and hurts, and yet I can’t stop. And sometimes I’d play shows on the last run, I’d scratch my neck while I was singing, and I’d horrified to see these red streaks of blood after. I’d go back after meet-and-greets, and I would look in the mirror and be horrified because there would be, like, just streaks, like I’d gone like this. [mimes scratching her neck]
On parenting and the “whipping cords” part of the new album’s title…
No, I’ve never wanted kids. But I do read about parenting a lot. For some reason it’s very interesting to me-I think because I’m just big on self-parenting. But I read this thing in a nautical book about how when ropes get frayed you’d use the whipping cords to fix the ends. The whole thing of the whipping cords is that, if I did have kids, I could either teach them how to stay out of trouble—or how to get out of trouble, which I think is more important. Because no matter how well prepared you are in life, you’re gonna fall down a hole, and if you can fix the frayed ends of things, then you’re better off.
On Lana Del Rey…
I just feel bad for anybody who gets trashed. I haven’t heard any of her stuff really, but I saw that first Saturday Night Live performance, and I didn’t think that there was anything about that performance that deserved to be trashed. If you gave me a whole movie’s worth of all the performances on Saturday Night Live with all of the people that they’ve had on there, she’d be way down on the list of people that I would trash. I don’t remember the song that I saw her sing, but that’s all I’ve seen of her.
In addition to the Interview interview, the perpetually haunted songstress just unveiled a brand new track from her upcoming album called “Werewolf” on Pitchfork. The song was originally inspired after seeing a battle scene in a movie at her mother’s house in Harlem, and then recorded in L.A. after running over to an elementary school across from her house (while wearing split pants) to record the sound of children’s screams.
This, of course, after revealing to The New York Times that she used to climb up and down a hill for 8 hours until she could no longer walk as “a rite of passage.”
Only Fiona.
The Idler Wheel… will be released on June 19. (iTunes)
