Singer on breaking down doors
Two-time Grammy awardwinning musician Melissa Etheridge was told by various radio stations that they couldn’t play her new song because ‘‘we’re already playing a woman’’.
It was the late 1980s, and despite receiving glowing reviews for her debut, self-titled album, the rock musician struggled to have her song play on the radio.
‘‘It’s interesting talking about it now, this was so long ago but it was the way of the industry in the ’ 80s; when we went around to the rock stations they’d say, ‘oh I’m sorry we can’t put you on the radio because we’re already playing a woman’,’’ she recalls.
‘‘Like, there was nothing wrong in saying that, ’that’s just how it is. You should understand that’.’’
Times are changing, albeit slowly, and fans have the chance to listen to two female rock musicians smash out their classics (in a row) in Wellington this month, as Etheridge joins ninetime Grammy award-winning musician Sheryl Crow.
It’s not the first time the pair have performed together, but it is their first tour and one they’ve been planning for some time.
‘‘We’ve talked about it since – I remember being at Madison Square Garden and talking with her about it in ’94 or something,’’ Etheridge recalls.
‘‘We’ve been talking about it for a long time. It was just so great to finally be coming down there and I’m really excited about it, I’m really thrilled.’’
Speaking from her home in Los Angeles, Etheridge couldn’t be happier to leave the States, describing the rise of the Trump and #MeToo era as ‘‘so much noise’’.
‘‘These are trying times, it’s very easy to get weary here because there’s so much noise. We’re moving ahead, we’re doing great things here, but it’s a little tiring so it will be nice to go down there, especially at the end of your summer,’’ she says.
Not that she’s complaining about the #MeToo campaign. In fact, it was because of that movement that she shared her trying experience of being shunned as a young musician for being a woman during the 1980s, a story she shared at the She Rocks awards when accepting the Icon Award.
‘‘We soon broke down those doors, but it’s hard, especially on rock and roll radio to hear any women back-to-back on the radio, to hear them singing. It’s a bit unusual here in the States, you know, we’re still moving through that,’’ she said.
The Bring Me Some Water singer isn’t averse to challenges. Etheridge announced she was a lesbian in 1994, calling herself the ‘‘other gay singer’’, at the time, nodding to Canadian Grammyaward winning artist k.d. lang.
Speaking to the Washington Post that year, Etheridge said it wasn’t a premeditated announcement.
‘‘I’ve always played women’s festivals and I was discovered in a women’s bar, so it’s never really been a big secret. I never said I was anything other than that,’’ she said at the time.
‘‘I was at the gay-lesbian ball, the Triangle Ball, the most fun ball of all . . . and k.d. got up and said, ‘Coming out was the best thing I ever did’. And then she introduced me and I said, ‘I’m glad to say I’ve been a lesbian all my life’. I thought everyone there knew that I was and that it was no big deal. But a huge roar went up and I thought, gee, I guess I came out.’’
Last November, she was charged with possession of marijuana while travelling through North Dakota. Commenting on New Zealand’s Green MP Chloe Swarbrick’s medicinal cannabis bill that failed in its first round, Etheridge says legalising cannabis was a smart move.
‘‘When I went through breast cancer 14 years ago, it was a big part of my recovery and a big part of getting through chemotherapy and I, right then and there, understood it as medicine and understood it as why the access to it is so very important so on that alone it’s an important thing to do for our societies where our health and our medicines, it’s something that’s affecting all of us,’’ she says.
‘‘To understand our bodies and plant medicine, legalising cannabis is a big step forwards, in our general health as a society.’’
Investigators found a vape pen on her tour bus as it crossed from Canada into the US, Billboard reported.
To anyone saying marijuana was a ‘‘gateway drug’’, they were ill informed, Etheridge says.
‘‘Here in America we have such an opiate problem -- its is horrific, and it has been shown over and over that cannabis can help people get off opiates,’’ she says.
‘‘It’s a safe alternative for pain relief. A lot of times the people who are so against cannabis are uneducated about it. They believe in an old story that has been told about it being a gateway drug, about it being addictive, and ‘you’re just stoners’, and there’s this stereotypical stoner thing and it’s time to get educated about it and move past it.
‘‘To do so requires smart intelligent people who use it to come forward and come out to really discuss it and educate it – that’s the most important.’’
The 56-year-old has just come off her Australian tour with Crow. The Sydney Morning Herald gave the performance three-and-a-half stars, noting Etheridge ‘‘dominated’’ her Sydney show.
Just last month, she was in Puerto Rico for seven days on her very own cruise line with fellow musician Sarah McLachlan.
‘‘This is me finally saying, ‘okay, I’ll get into this cruise stuff, let’s see what it’s like’, and we did one in 2016 and oh, I had a blast,’’ she said.
Along with her wife, Nurse Jackie producer and writer Linda Wallem, Etheridge took fans and fellow musicians on board the Royal Caribbean International’s Serenade of the Seas.
Surely it must have been hard work performing every night?
‘‘You know what? I thought so too, and yet when I’m doing it to be amongst the kind of fans that would pay that much money to go on a boat with me, it’s pretty amazing, it’s kind of a delightful experience,’’ she says.
Melissa Etheridge and Sheryl Crow will perform at Wellington’s TSB Arena on Thursday.