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WHY I KISSED THE QUIFF GOODBYE
New hair, new style, new album, newly single – it’s all change for singer IMELDA MAY. She tells Charlotte Pearson Methven why it was time to ditch her rockabilly persona and write from the heart ➤ PHOTOGRAPHS Elisabeth Hoff
Singer Imelda May on ditching her rockabilly persona and writing from the heart
Imelda May is fed up with talking about her hair. But we are doing just that, over coffee in East London, ahead of the much-anticipated release of her fifth album, the dramatically named Life Love Flesh Blood, which is full of ballads just as raw as the title would suggest. It is understandable that the Dublin-born singer would prefer to tackle more weighty subjects. Imelda is one of Ireland’s leading musical lights: she sang for the Obamas in 2011 and was asked to croon for the Queen on her state visit to Ireland that same year (though Imelda turned down the request due to a prior commitment to Sunderland Football Club); she is best friends with Bono and has performed with U2; and her latest album, produced by the legendary T Bone Burnett, features Jeff Beck and Jools Holland, who ‘discovered’ her in 2008 and on whose New Year’s Eve Hootenanny show she recently appeared. It is to her great credit that she humours me as I ask about her new Chrissie Hynde- esque hairdo, which, frankly, suits her.
Previously Imelda, 42, sported a 50s-style quiff with a dramatic blonde streak, in keeping with the rockabilly vibe of her music, which has now morphed into something new, more intimate, folksy and acoustic, with searingly honest lyrics. ‘It was like that hairstyle was taking over,’ she says. ‘People expected a certain attitude to come with the hair. I don’t like boxes – and that box was getting tighter and tighter. I felt the walls closing in and I’d had enough. I would be writing songs, producing my own records – and then turning up to interviews and talking about my hair. And I guess I still am!’ she says, letting out a whoop of laughter that proves she is no diva.
In fact, she is anything but. Brought up as a Catholic in the working- class Liberties area of Dublin, the youngest of five children, by her seamstress mother and decorator father who were always playing show tunes, Imelda was born Imelda Mary Clabby (May is a derivation of her middle name). Her parents still live in the house Imelda grew up in and she visits often. ‘My whole family are musical. One of my brothers is a taxi driver and plays music all day in his cab. My sister got me started singing in church when I was four and she still corrects my harmonies.’
Imelda takes huge exception to any suggestion that the Liberties was in any way lacking as a community. ‘When I was a girl an American gospel choir came to visit and they said, “We’re honoured to be performing for the underprivileged children of Dublin.” We were all looking around going, “Where are the underprivileged children?” We certainly didn’t think it was us. Going back there keeps me real. As soon as I set foot in the neighbourhood, my shoulders drop. There are no flies on anyone in the Liberties and no one treats me differently now.’ The exception may be her father, who is immensely proud of his youngest. ‘He asked for a leather jacket for Christmas to wear to my gigs,’ Imelda laughs. ‘My siblings complain that all he cares about is “Imelda May.”’
Another impetus behind her recent change of look, Imelda admits, was the upheaval she went through when her marriage to guitarist Darrel Higham – her former bandmate and father of her four-year- old daughter Violet – ended in 2015. The two had been together since meeting on the Dublin club circuit. ‘Unfortunately, we slowly grew apart after almost 18 years together,’ she explains. ‘I thought, “I need a change.” It wasn’t a planned thing, like, “new vibe, new man, new album”; I wasn’t trying to do a Madonna.’ The new look was also accompanied by a redecoration of her home, which was formerly done up in a 50s style, in keeping with her hair. ‘I changed it to make it more my own taste, mixing modern minimalism with cool, quirky vintage pieces.’ Thankfully, the split has been amicable, with Darrel living close to their former marital home in Hampshire, where Imelda still lives with Violet. Imelda has even performed back-up vocals on his upcoming solo album. ‘We’re good. Violet is the centre of our universe and we make it all work around her.’
Contrary to what the title might suggest, Life Love Flesh Blood is ‘not a break-up album’, Imelda insists. ‘People just presume that because I broke up with my husband. But I met someone, so it’s about falling in love after a big split, being scared and feeling lust again. And then I got my heart broken by that person and so I wrote about that, too…’ (Imelda won’t reveal the identity of this boyfriend, but at the time it was reported that he was French.) One of the singles on the album, ‘Black Tears’, conjures this achingly. ‘I had a moment – I’m not going to tell you exactly what, because it hurt too much – but it was a major goodbye. I closed the door and looked up at the mirror and I looked like Alice Cooper. My eyes were streaming.’
It is something most of us have experienced at one point or another. The same can be said of ‘Call Me’, the first single from the album, which is about the wretchedness of waiting for the phone to ring at the start of a relationship. ‘It’s something everyone has been through. You’re lucky if you haven’t.’ And there’s ‘How Bad Can a Good Girl Be’, which is apparently Bono’s favourite. ‘He read the words and said, “Damn, I wish I’d written that.” It’s about how women are so often put in one of two categories: the good girl a man wants to marry or the bad girl he wants to bed. I think all women have both inside us and I wanted to write about that – pure desire and all it brings with it.’
I sense that Imelda has used music to heal her heartache. ‘For sure, it has been therapy,’ she says. ‘I used to be like a politician when I wrote songs – I had this cunning way of writing honestly but without revealing much. This time I didn’t want to do that. I wrote from my heart. You have to get things off your chest or they eat you up. I thought, “I’ll start writing and see what comes out…”’ Is heartbreak essential to successful songwriting? ‘Well, there are 16-year- olds writing soulful songs, but I don’t think they have the same weight behind them. With anything in the arts, you get better the more you experience life.’
Bono has been a huge support to Imelda, through her divorce and in the creation of this emotional latest album. She and the U2 frontman have been firm friends since meeting at a charity Christmas busk in Dublin years ago. ‘He’s a wonderful soul and has been the most amazing mentor. He never tells me what to do, but somehow helps me to make the right decisions for myself. Recently when I couldn’t figure out
what to do with my album cover, I texted him and said, “I’m stuck,” and he said, “Send it to me.” He’s so good like that. It’s like when you think, “I’ll paint the room white,” and you go to buy white paint and there are about 1,000 shades.’ I tell her there is a name for this affliction: option anxiety. ‘Yes, that’s it. I get it badly.’
Option anxiety aside, Imelda is ‘in a good place now. I’ve recovered from that last romance, though it’s been a bumpy ride.’ When she’s not recording or performing, Violet keeps her busy. ‘I loved the way my parents brought us up, the madness and creativity we had, and I want to give as much of that as I can to Violet, even though she is an only child and living in a totally different environment in the English countryside.’ Violet has just started school, ‘so now I am juggling like everyone else,’ says Imelda. Until now Violet has accompanied her mum on tour. ‘She’s travelled the world. She’ll say things like, “Can we go back to Los Angeles? I miss Santa Monica Pier.” And she’ll talk about Spain, where we once spent a month touring. She even corrected my sister’s pronunciation of chorizo.’ Violet ‘wants to be a singer, an actress, an artist, a fashion designer… and a mermaid. Hopefully, she will find a way to combine all of those!’
If Violet does enter the music industry, one thing Imelda feels strongly about is that she should not do it via the reality television route of shows such as The X Factor and The Voice. ‘That’s not getting into music, it’s getting into TV land, and the ones it benefits are those making the shows. Music should be about a genuine yearning to be creative, not “I want to be famous”. I have people coming up to me all the time saying, “My daughter wants to get into music. How should she do it?” And my response is always, “If your daughter really wanted it, she would already be doing it, writing and jamming.” If it’s inside you, you can’t not do it. Young people think the TV route is the easy, fun way, but it’s neither easy nor fun. What was fun was what I did as a teenager: meeting up with friends who also loved music, paying a fiver for a disused dance hall and organising jams and open mic sessions, making mistakes and trying again, without cameras or pressure.’
Imelda was playing the Dublin club circuit from the age of 16, her elder siblings smuggling her in, with their parents’ blessing. ‘That was my musical education. I had no formal training; we couldn’t afford it. My parents, to their great credit, never said, “Why don’t you get a real job?” They could see how music fired me up. I think they’re relieved now that it’s worked out, though. I struggled for a long time. Every gig cost me a fortune – I had to pay for the van, the venue, my musicians, and then sometimes only ten people would turn up.’ Imelda worked in a laundrette and a petrol station and did double shifts in a nursing home, at various times, to make ends meet. ‘The nursing home was the best. I learned so much about dignity and compassion. If music hadn’t worked out, I think I would have gone back to working with the elderly. That whole period of my life has really made me appreciate what I have now.’
Imelda – having done things the honest, hard way – is an amazing role model, I tell her. And not many would have said no to the chance to perform for Her Majesty to honour a commitment to a football club. ‘That’s how I was raised,’ she says. ‘You don’t let people down. It was for the club’s Christmas party and they’d asked me ages in advance. When they found out that I’d turned down the Queen they were chuffed and made such a fuss of us.’ She did subsequently get to meet the monarch – ‘at an afternoon I was invited to at Buckingham Palace, for Irish people who have contributed to British society’ – and was relieved there was no scheduling conflict when she was asked to perform for the Obamas during their visit to Ireland. ‘They were amazing; so funny – and so tall! I got to chat to them afterwards. They gave the performers presidential M&Ms, which are red, white and blue with the presidential stamp on them. I ate [Irish actor] Brendan Gleeson’s so I could keep my own. They’re still in a box somewhere in my house.’
In a bizarre coincidence, just a week later Imelda was in New York City doing a gig, and ‘I came out of the hotel into a little alleyway near Chinatown and this convoy came down the street. A black car pulled up next to me, the window rolled down and Obama peered out and waved!’ Being a significant enough performer to be recognised by the then President of the US is quite an achievement for someone with no formal music training, I say. ‘I know, right?!’ Imelda laments that fewer working- class children are following in her footsteps these days. ‘Nowadays there’s greater emphasis on going to music college, which working- class families can’t afford.’ Imelda is so fired up about this that she went into a local music institute in Dublin and asked whether they’d consider making provision for people who couldn’t afford to go there. A year later she received a call from them to say that they’d found the funds and were going to set up a scholarship in her name.
For all the accolades she has accrued, Imelda has remained resolutely down-to - earth. I attended a West London gig she performed for press shortly before our interview and noticed how approachable she was, interacting with the audience throughout. ‘I just love gigging and the electricity I have with the crowd, all of us having a nice evening together,’ she says. She has no aspirations to become a megastar with all the airs and graces that go with it. The song she is perhaps proudest of on her new album is ‘Human’, which, I think, sums her up. ‘I noticed there were so many songs for and about women in which they are described as angel, queen, baby, princess, diamond… All these over-the-top descriptions that it’s impossible to live up to,’ says Imelda. ‘I thought, “I don’t want to be any of those things!” I have major faults. I’m going to fall off any pedestal. I just want to be a human – hopefully, one day, somebody’s special human.’ I’m sure she won’t be waiting long. Imelda’s new album Life Love Flesh Blood will be released on 7 April on Decca Records. She will tour the UK and Ireland from 4 to 31 May