Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol. 37, No. 6. April 10, 1974

Shona Laing

page break

Shona Laing

Whispering Afraid is Shona Laing's first album. It was released late in 1973 following the success of 1905, Show Your Love and Masquerade. During an interview at her home she talked about the album and her art:

Shona Laing in a recording studio

Salient: What is the importance of the title track?

Shona Laing: Well I can't make definite statements but.... with things like: "I see them sitting around talking about politics and the weather"....you've got my attitudes to politics. I don't know much about it and I don't really want to because personally I think that politicians and people just sit down and rave, and never get anywhere. And You Are The One is sort of my political statement, ah....."I'm too young to reminisce", that's (from) Like Days Gone Before, and I suppose "life where are you taking me/why hold back when there's not time to wait" is like Is Anything Ever Everlasting.....

I can't really sit down and do this, but I feel that every song on the album is a branch from Whispering Afraid.... it wasn't consciously done, it just happened that way.

I've noticed that there are two types of songs on the album, your 'political' ones and those which are more 'personal': I'm thinking of You Are The One, with lines like: "when all the voices unite on this earth/ the revolution will be called rebirth" and the opposite of this, say If Only. Are you aware of these differences when you begin writing?

No, not really.... I can just sit down and feel in the mood, and write words down and half the time, after the first verse I won't even know what the rest is going to be about. It just develops as an almost subconscious thing.... like last night I sat down and wrote this thing, it was quite late and I felt like it. It started of.....I didn't know how it was starting... it just progressed and the final two verses fitted in. I didn't even know it was the theme, it just happened.... and that's how all of them happened.

O.K. Do you have a personal philosophy? Yes......well I really am an idealist. I see things happening that are pointless; I know they're pointless and the people doing them know they're poindess. And it seems so pathetic that no-one is doing anything about it... and that's just the feeling I have. I can sit down and write a song like You Are The One and it's almost anger.... but I realise at the same time that it's only a very, very small statement and it's not going to change the world.... but maybe I can make some people feel this way.

What about the personal songs... Lady Dipton? Well I'd been thinking about writing it for quite a while, and one night I'd been sitting and talking to her.... she's just a brilliant person, that's all.....I'd just got home and was thinking of her... and it was a conscious effort to write about a person. I actually wrote it as a poem first. (Lady Dipton is the album's "Your Song", a simple tribute to 'a person that I admire a lot': There's a slow kind of air/that surrounds her/ as she blinks or slips back her hair/ And her head's slightly tilted/as she listens/to the music so easy to share/We've talked about poetry and people/We've laughed about all kinds of things/ She's unique in her own kind of fashion/Lady Dipton/its your song I sing.....)

How do you usually write your songs?

Usually the melody comes first.... I just build up the words, and later I might change the tune.

Do you just sit down with a guitar?

Yes.

Do you play the piano?

No, not really. I've never written with a piano.

What about influences. Were you interested in literature at college?

Not really. English used to be my worst subject, I absolutely hated it.

What, then was your best subject?

Science. It's funny really, I became disillusioned with science later on. It really bugged me that people couldn't sit down to look at something like a rainbow or anything without saying: well that happens because of....' and a great scientific explanation. It was for that reason that I turned to English in the 6th and 7th form and I really came to like it. But I don't know that it influenced what I write, so much as how I write it.

When did you first begin writing songs?

I wrote my first song when I was ten, and I started learning the ukelele when I was eight or nine.

When were the songs on this album written?

I think You Are The One was written first, at the beginning of 1972. And 1905 was written close after that. All the others were written early last year.

How was the album made?

Well it wasn't done in the sense of: "right, we're gonna sit down and make it over ten days". The album actually took about fifteen months, we'd do a song, leave it for a couple of months, then we'd finish it off. This wasn't such a good idea because things like strings were added at the same time and the sound is basically similar, there is no difference in feel. Lady Dipton and Is Anything Everlasting are two completely different songs but the strings sound the same.

At an earlier meeting in her manager's office she explained that Masquerade and Show Your Love applied as much to herself as to others: "on the album I'm just singing my own songs, telling my own feelings. Whispering Afriad (the song) is a memory in parts but still an idea and a worry. Cliff-top Castles (from the verse—"I've been thinking hard about my time/Where I'm gonna go and what I'll find/ And my cliff top castles fade away/To a suburban home on a winter's day.... ") can still fade but I don't think it will worry me so much now. It embarrasses me in some ways, yet in other ways I am very proud of it....as a whole song and as a sequence of ideas."