Karen Elson: rock ’n’ roll, marriage and moving on
FROM OLDHAM TO NASHVILLE, THE CATWALK TO THE RECORDING STUDIO, KAREN ELSON HAS LIVED A LIFE LESS ORDINARY. HERE THE MODEL AND MUSICIAN TALKS TO SARAH BAILEY ABOUT THE GOOD DAYS – AND THE BAD
The supermodel-turned-blues star muses on living a life less ordinary
Abbey Road Studio Three. This is the hallowed space where Pink Floyd recorded Dark Side Of The Moon over 40 years ago. And today, on a strangely still and sweltering London summer day, Karen Elson, the Oldham-born Pre-raphaelite-haired supermodel and, more latterly, musician, is being titivated for Red’s cover shoot. She’s dressed in typical Elson off-duty style in a vintage Ossie Clark floral dress, so lovely it should probably be in a collection in a museum. “It’s my sister’s,” she grins impishly. “I’m quite tempted to steal it.”
The storied location feels perfectly appropriate. By any measure, Elson has lived a quite extraordinary – and distinctly rock ’n’ roll – life. From her unprepossessing northern schooldays (when she was bullied for being a gangly
redhead – The Ghost Who Walks – aka the name of her first album); to poster child of ’90s ‘Alien Chic’ who, with her shaved eyebrows and ketchup-coloured hair, graced the cover of The Face, Italian Vogue and more; to haute Bohemia in New York, where she was Grace Coddington’s muse and started playing music with
The Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan. Then marriage to Jack White (like some Tim Burton fairy tale made flesh!), to divorce and her own burgeoning career as a solo recording artist, songwriter and musician.
I first met her in the turbo-charged atmosphere of her ’90s modelling ascendancy when I was assigned to follow her round Paris, to fittings with Jean Paul Gaultier and Jeremy Scott, then backstage at show after show. She was funny, opinionated and feisty as hell: I remember Dick Page, the make-up artist, affectionately nicknaming her a “gob on a stick”. I’ve interviewed her several times since, perhaps most memorably when she performed with the cabaret troupe The Citizens’ Band in New York and I got to watch her play a little harp and sing Nico songs on stage, while her best friend Sarah Sophie Flicker (now a leading feminist activist and one of the key catalysts behind the Washington Women’s March) hung from a nightclub roof on a trapeze. As Elson puts it, “There’s something in me that would never say no to an adventure.”
Meeting her again today, just a couple of years shy of her 40th birthday, she looks as beautiful as ever – more so in my opinion – although she won’t thank me for
that particular observation. “I hate that expression, ‘You look good for your age.’ What am I supposed to look like? Haggard?” Just for the record, she boasts translucent skin the hue of skimmed milk (“SPF 50. Always. Skinceuticals”), and frankly has no business looking this good, as she was out the night before with Alison Mosshart of The Kills and assorted glamorous reprobates at a party for the fashion brand Rockins – and she fell asleep in her make-up. “I think a lot of my beauty regime is just living life happy,” she says by way of explanation. “Yes, I’m drinking a glass of rosé at lunch [she’s true to her word, by the way]. Sometimes I’ll fall asleep with my make-up on – like last night – but it’s all right! I woke up, washed it off!”
A devil-may-care approach to grooming is probably quite useful right now as, when we meet, Elson is mid-way through touring her sophomore album – Double Roses, a gorgeously lush affair titled after a Sam Shepard poem – and the mien of her band on the road is decidedly lo-fi. “I’m not like Mariah Carey or anything like that. I’m still travelling around in a dodgy old van with a bunch of boys, basically.” She grimaces. “There’s a lot of things that can go wrong. I was playing a festival the other day and my amp broke and it was like this god-awful sound was coming out of it and I can’t hear my guitar, just this grating sound.” As with all such gnarly technical snafus; as with occasional bouts of crippling nerves; and just the general grittiness of “going without showers and not staying in the best hotels and winging it, basically”, she’s apt to channel her friend, the aforementioned Mosshart. “She’s so badass. She’s an interesting woman. I just keep thinking, ‘What would Alison do?’ And I don’t think Alison gives a damn.”
IF YOU HAVEN’T YET COTTONED ON TO ELSON THE MUSICIAN, MAY I SUGGEST YOU IMMEDIATELY
REMEDY THAT SITUATION. The Ghost Who Walks was written when she was still with husband, White… the story goes that he heard her shyly practising her vocals hidden in her walk-in closet and persuaded her to record it. (In the seven-year hiatus between this and her second album, the Elson-white marriage famously broke down.)
Double Roses marks a new mood. It’s a seductive brew, both poignant and luscious, combining Elson’s ethereal vocal style with seriously empowered lyrics of defiance and survival. “A real reflection of life. There’s been twists and turns, so much positivity and at times really difficult scenarios that I’ve been in…”
I SENSE THAT THE MAKING OF THE ALBUM HAS
BEEN A CATHARTIC PROCESS, if not always easy. When the first single, Distant Shore, came out (sample lyric: “I am alone, I am free, no one to come and conquer me”), Elson was dismayed that the mainstream music press didn’t so much review the song as use it as a springboard for gossip and speculation about the rock and rollers in her life. “At first, it really bothered me and then I thought, forget it. I think, as women, we’re constantly having to justify why we do the things we do, having a career and just being ballsy.”
One could never accuse Elson of being anything other than ballsy. Over lunch she tells me a story about her first experiences as a model, navigating the streets of Tokyo alone, aged 16, getting drunk for the first time and hanging out with Jarvis Cocker. “It was eye-opening… I was just a dodgy northerner who lived off white bread and Jammie Dodgers, drinking saké like it was water.” Years later, falling in love and getting hitched to White (not exactly shy himself) was a coup de foudre on a grand scale that saw them say their vows in a canoe on the Amazon river. “Nobody, just us. We were proper elopers,” she smiles, not unfondly. Did marriage to White expose her to a level of fame and scrutiny beyond her imaginings? “I never think about those things,” she shrugs. “I never think about fame… Fame is such a waxing and waning thing, it’s best not to worry. When I got married, I just got married and decided to move to Nashville and it all felt perfectly normal in my head.” In Nashville, she gave birth to her two children – Scarlett, 11, and Henry, 10 – and, for a while, ran a vintage clothes store, though that’s now wrapped (the remaining stock remains in her attic in trunks), as has her marriage. The dissolution of Elson and White’s union – rather like Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin’s blinking conscious uncoupling – is one of those over-discussed pieces of celebrity narrative (Elson and White famously sent out ‘divorce party invitations’ – how rebellious, how chic!). Today, Elson, who’s within her rights to be royally sick of this as an interview topic, is sanguine and forgiving on the subject. “Jack’s an
I’m still travelling around in a DODGY old van with a bunch of boys. There’s a lot of things that can go WRONG
incredible father, he really is, an absolute class-a father. As ex-husbands go, I’m really lucky in that sense. As the kids get older, I realise how fortunate I am to have him as a co-parent. I really give massive props to Jack in that sense.”
Clearly, not everything has been easy, as she is the first to admit. What words of wisdom does she have for Red readers currently going through the fire themselves?
“I think there’s no easy way around it. You can have the best intentions, and there will forever be a special place for Jack in my heart. But, as anyone who has been through a divorce knows, there are good days and bad days. And my advice is this, ‘This too will pass.’ I know it sounds so basic, such basic wisdom. But the truth is, whenever you are going through anything hard, time and perspective really help.
“I want to say that I am a powerhouse of strength, but we’ve all been on our bathroom floor sobbing, wondering why our life is the way our life is. Thank God I have got such a tight core of women friends. They have kept me sane in the darkest of times.”
She continues thoughtfully: “Jack and I have been divorced a few years now, and it’s a lot easier. We’re in each others’ lives with regard to our kids, but we also have separate lives. Our kids know they are loved by their dad. They know they are loved by their mum.
While it might not be ideal, it works.”
Talk returns to last night. Elson found herself partying with a lot of her ‘Cool Britannia’ cohort from back in the day, and at one point she found herself watching some of the younger women doing their make-up in the bathrooms. “I just had a flashback to myself 20 years ago, cocky and self-assured and also really vulnerable. I remember I would wear wild outfits and the best make-up and my dress might get ripped to shreds and I wouldn’t care. And then I just breathed out and my dress fell apart and I just had a flashback to my daredevil youth.”
It was clearly a bittersweet moment. “There’s a price that comes with all that,” she continues. “I’ve seen a lot of casualties, I really have. I think about the tribe that I was part of in New York. It seemed so fun and wild and free and inspiring, and it was all of those things. There were also people that just didn’t make it, there were people who fell through the cracks.”
As a parent, the fragility of life plays on her mind. “As a mother you think about, ‘How can I protect my kids from that? How can I protect them from recklessness?’” Her son, she says, shares a lot of her nature. “He’s so sweet and complicated and emotional and head in the clouds. That is totally how I was as a child.” And her daughter? “She’s very wise, she’s very responsible… I’m really excited to see what becomes of her in future years.” As for herself? She is anticipating her 40th birthday with typical gutsiness and relish. “I am going to have the biggest party and so much fun. I am going to celebrate the daylights out of it, because – wow,” she laughs. “I love getting older, I’m not afraid of it. I mean, maybe a little bit. But I’m not going to end up with fillers in my face looking like Cruella de Vil.”
And her current romantic status? There’s a certain amount of texting and phone checking during our lunch, but I don’t delve. When she’s ready to share the next chapter, I have no doubt she will. “As women, we get fed this notion of perfection, of a knight in shining armour coming to rescue us. I fall in love so quickly and I can’t beat that out of me, sadly. It’s a thing we’re fed as children. ‘Your life is going to be great if you just meet the right man.’ But I’ve realised that life is just great as it is. You make it great,” she smiles wryly. “And sometimes it’s shit as well. Sometimes it’s absolute chaos. You just have to have faith that you’re taking care of yourself and holding yourself accountable for your actions and being honest with yourself.” She pauses for a beat. “And it will get better.” Double Roses is out now (1965 Records)
I want to say I am a POWERHOUSE of strength. But we’ve all been on our bathroom floor SOBBING