‘Clues that life was worth living’: Singer Cat Power on overcoming decades of sadness

Each week, Benjamin Law asks public figures to discuss the subjects we’re told to keep private by getting them to roll a die. The numbers they land on are the topics they’re given. This week, he talks to Cat Power. The American singer-songwriter, 53, is best known for her acclaimed albums including You Are Free, Sun and Wanderer. Her latest release is Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert.

Cat Power: “As I got older, it was easier to find clues that life was worth living, that I deserved happiness, love, friendship.”Credit: © Dean Chalkley / Observer / eyevine / Headpress

RELIGION

Were you religious growing up? My mother has Cherokee and Irish heritage; my father’s side is Jewish and Choctaw, but he was raised Jehovah’s Witness. And I was brought up by my grandmother – who was Southern Baptist – in North Carolina and Tennessee until I was five, so we did a lot of singing in church, dressing up on Sunday and hearing about hell. That’s just what people did in the South when you were poor and the new kid on the street: you got invited to church. There were some scary sermons, but there was also free food, and we were very poor, and I was very hungry.

Some of those sermons about Satan, crucifixion and blood can be scary when you’re a kid, right? Oh, I had nightmares because of those stories: “This guy killed his son”; “This brother killed his brother”; “This guy had sex with his sister”. But I loved the beautiful things, too: the hymns and the kinder stories; the teachings of Christ about loving your brother and accepting all people – your neighbour, the sick, the needy, the poor, the weak.

Did the church give you your first relationship with music? Not my first. My grandmother would cook and sing, and my job was to pick out records. I was her DJ. If she wasn’t singing, she’d ask me to pull out a Johnny Cash record, an Elvis Presley song, a Patsy Cline track, and she’d record me singing.

Does performing live feel like a religious or spiritual experience? Not religious, but it can feel like a spell. I’ve always felt that we human beings are almost slaves to song; it’s like a drug. I’ll play Donna Summer for an hour straight while I get ready to go to a party. Or you’re like, “F---, I just saw the love of my life with a new girlfriend” and you want to play Nina Simone or Billie Holiday because you’re crushed. Those soundwaves go through us, become a part of our cell structure. I’ve never met Nina Simone; I’ve never met Billie Holiday or Hank Williams. But their music touches the bone.

POLITICS

Where did you get your most deeply held values, and what are they? Well, the shit that I got brainwashed from: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

On social media, you stand up for many things: indigenous rights, the environment, Palestinian rights. What motivates you to use your platform in these ways? I started travelling young. I was 23 when I left America and went to Europe. I was 24 when I went to South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania, and all over America, Australia, China, Japan, India, Bangladesh. So I think it comes from having witnessed starving children, beaten women, lepers, homeless children, homeless women, homeless men; having friends who’ve died from HIV, cancer, suicide, drug addiction. I feel these things should be everybody’s problem. And film, music and art should be part of the solution.

I’m talking to you at a really interesting – and, for many, distressing – juncture in US politics … Oh, America’s in big trouble.

As an American, if you had power and influence, what would be on the agenda? It wouldn’t be trickle-down economics: it would be healthcare, education and the environment. Equality, human rights, free school lunches. Instead, America’s now the face of everything that’s wrong in the world.

DEATH

A music critic once observed that you were a “singularly gifted American artist in communicating grief”. Does that description resonate with you? Interesting, I’ve not read that. But I think my music was generally very sad because I was very sad during most of my life – until [2006 album] The Greatest.

You’ve been candid about how, for long periods prior to The Greatest, you were suicidal. This runs in my family because of addiction, alcoholism, a lack of education and poverty. The children were repeatedly told things they should never have been told – unhealthy things – and grew up believing those things.

How did you build the strength you needed to survive? Through experience: “Hold on: I don’t feel like that today. I don’t like feeling that.” As I got older, it was easier to find clues that life was worth living, that I deserved happiness, love, friendship, a good meal, a trip to the dentist, taking a shower twice a day. It was hard and slow, but I’ll never forget what other artists told me, too. I’ll never forget the hand they put on my shoulder, the kindness they granted me, not because they felt sorry, but because they saw me as a peer.

I imagine your music has also kept other people alive over the years. Have people told you that? They have. I remember feeling that I was being kept alive by those I call “the great translators” – Johnny Cash, David Bowie, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Miles Davis. For somebody else, maybe it’s Miley Cyrus. People have told me: “I played your song when I got married to my wife”; “I played your song when I gave birth to my daughter”; “I played your song when my mother was passing from cancer”. When people tell me these things, it makes me feel as if we’re all in the same race together.

Lifeline: 13 11 14

Cat Power plays Sydney’s City Recital Hall on March 3 and 4, Melbourne’s Festival Hall March 6, Port Fairy’s Folk Festival March 7-10, Adelaide Festival March 10 and Queensland Performing Arts Centre March 12.

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