'I Dream of Joni', 10th March 2002, in You magazine. By Stuart Husband.
Singer-songwriter Nerina Pallot is only 27, but her lyrics and style have their roots in another age. And she would rather doff her cap to true pop idols such as Joni Mitchell than to the current crop of manufactured and marketed artists.
Carole King. Joni Mitchell. Carly Simon. Nerina Pallot. If the last name on that illustrious list is unfamiliar, it won't be for long. Nerina (her surname rhymes with 'fallow') will soon be joining the great female singer-songwriter pantheon. At least, if she has anything to do with it. "Those women are my idols," she sighs. "If I ever create anything a tenth as good as them, I'll die happy."
Nerina's first creation, an album called 'Dear Frustrated Superstar', may already have improved on that fraction. The title, she tells me, is ironic; the content - 14 lush, jazzy-folky songs, with stark lyrics of love, faith and loss - is not. In fact, it's remarkably mature stuff for a 27-year-old making her debut, having more in common with Steely Dan than Steps. "I'm glad you said that!" she cries. "Steely Dan are my all-time favourites." She smiles wryly. "I think I've always had an older head on younger shoulders."
That's not the only thing that marks Nerina out from today's pop pack. She also writes and paints, and is as happy enthusing over Russian novelists and postimpressionists in her eloquent drawl (flat Estuary vowels thrown in) as tours and songs. There's also her enigmatic beauty, the product of an exotic genealogy.
Nerina's mother, Carmen, was born in India, and came, penniless, to London in the 1960s. She became a torch singer, with residencies at the likes of Batley variety Club alongside Shirley Bassey. "She was very traditional," says Nerina, "and possibly the only woman who went through the Sixties without touching drugs." She met Nerina's half-French father, George, during a summer season in Jersey, wher he was the coach operator. "At the end of the summer he asked her to marry him. The problem was, he was alredy married with three kids." Carmen only found out about his wife when she fell pregnant with Nerina. She stayed in Jersey for the birth, with Nerina's father passing in and out of their lives. He didn't divorce his first wife until Nerina was 12.
"I think that's why I write a lot about loneliness," muses Nerina. "I had no constant in my childhood. There was never a lack of love, or any question that my sister, who was born three years later, and I were the most important things in my parents' lives. It was just an unorthodox upbringing. I'd been into music since I was four or five, and we got a piano, but when I was little I was regarded as the weirdo in school." She sighs. "it probably didn't help that I was obsessed with Shostakovich and William Blake when everyone else was into Wham!"
Salvation arrived in the unlikely shape of Elvira, a girl who moved in next door when Nerina was 13. "I still had the Care Bears on my wall, and she brought the likes of Bon Jovi into my life." She looks embarrassed. "It sounds mad, but I was brought up a strict Catholic, and up till then I thought I'd be damned if I listened to stuff like that." Some might agree with you where Bon Jovi are concerned... "They might!" she laughs. "But I was getting to be a teenager and loathing myself for having sexual feelings. So Elvira taught me it was OK."
Just as well, because Nerina was soon off to a Berkshire boarding school, where 50 girls squared up to 850 boys. She studied music, and discovered her singer-songwriter peers, but it was little improvement on Jersey on the happiness front. "It was a cruel environment," she shudders. "And it was also where I had my heart broken for the fist time."
Lost years followed, with Nerina pouring out angry songs while earning a crust making curtains, doing radio jingles for carpet warehouses, and performing Carpenters and Carole King covers at bar mitzvahs. "It wasn't so bad," she shrugs. "You got cash in hand and nibbles."
It was when she took a job as a record company secretary that she got her life back. She was encouraged by her boss, ex-Ian Dury and Clash manager Andrew King, and made the tape that got her a deal. "I'd almost given up on music, but I've always been able to write," she says. "To me, the songs are floating out there in the ether and I just pick them up. I'm waiting for that classic, my 'Bridge over Troubled Water', to come along."
Judging by the lyrical content of 'Dear Frustrated Superstar' ("It's just a sadness, I can't explain it / The world just gets to me"), 'Bridge over Troubled Water' would be comparatively cheery. "I know," laughs Nerina. "I'm a fairly happy person, but I love songs that tell stories, like Patsy Cline's, all of which are desperately sad. I've been with my boyfriend Jeremy [Stacey, producer of her album] for four years now, and it's great, but I can't write a happy song about him. Thankfully, he turns a blind eye."
No wonder Nerina sticks out in the shiny, here-today-gone-tomorrow pop climate. "I often wish I had been born 25 years earlier," she laments. "I'd like to have been among women like Joni, and Patti Smith. I think Id be a much better writer and musician with that competition. Who do I have? Natalie Imbruglia and Dido."
But Natalie's deep, isn't she? "Have you read her lyrics?" she exclaims. "They're passionless." Well, Dido has cracked America... "She's the most incredible exercise in marketing," she protests. "I'd like to be more supportive, but most of the people around now just aren't that creative. I'm thinking long-term; I know it'll take a few albums to get into my stride."
The only thing she ever wanted, she says, is a space of her own, so last year's purchase of a flat in South London brought fulfilment. "It sounds pathetic," she says, "but I'm thrilled with my mortgage. I love sitting in the garden and watching the squirrels." She's planning a trip to Australia. There's one other thing, however, that would make her life complete. "I have this fantasy," she says sheepishly, "where Joni Mitchell gets hold of my album and loves it so much, she calls me to tell me so." She smirks. "Ridiculous, right?"
Au contraire. The way Nerina's career's going, Joni will be lucky to get through.
The album, 'Dear Frustrated Superstar', is out on Polydor.
I Dream of Joni, 10th March 2002, You magazine
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