Suzanne Vega: New music, storytelling and headlining Glasto in a bulletproof vest

One of the most celebrated songwriters of the past four decades, multi-talented New York storyteller Suzanne Vega has recently been busy treating UK audiences to her sublime blend of pop-infused folk, delivering spellbinding performances at the Cambridge Folk Festival and Glastonbury, to mention just a couple. Here, she tells Headliner about returning to the road, her now legendary debut Worthy Farm headline appearance, and her latest foray into the world of filmmaking…

Every Glastonbury headliner will have their own story about the first time they topped the bill at the world’s most iconic music festival, but none can lay a glove on that of Suzanne Vega. In 1989, with hits such as Marlene On The Wall, Luka and Tom’s Diner marking her out as one of the world’s most gifted new talents, Vega became not only the first woman to headline Glastonbury, but also the first artist to do so wearing a bulletproof vest.

“It started the morning of the show,” Vega begins, chatting to Headliner over Zoom, a week or so after her much lauded headline performance on the Acoustic Stage at this year’s Glastonbury. Joining us on the road, she is currently gearing up for a show in Amsterdam following a short bout of Covid from which she has just recovered. “It turned out that my poor bassist, Mikey, who had been stalked by this woman for quite some time, received a death threat that morning, and I didn’t know I was included in that death threat until later in the day. My manager was with us and he had gotten Scotland Yard in on the whole thing. It was being taken very seriously.

“Then, about an hour before we were due to go on stage, the police said not to go ahead; that they had found the woman but not her partner, and their professional recommendation was that I do not do the show. I said, “what are you talking about? I have to do the show, I’m headlining!” They said that in that case I would have to wear a bulletproof vest, so I took one of the Scotland Yard men’s vests, which was of course enormous on me, so they had to gaffa tape me into it. I then went on and did the show, which all felt like it was happening in slow motion.”

Having taken the decision to go ahead with the show, Vega and her band found themselves forced into an all too abrupt ending to their set, albeit for entirely separate circumstances to those that had threatened to derail the performance.

“Right at the end of the show, my keyboard player ran over to me and said, 'Sing Luka and get off stage!' I was like, ‘Oh my god, what’s happened?’ and he said he’d tell me later but to just play the song and get off the stage. So, we played Luka and left the stage. No one had mentioned to me that there was a curfew. Glastonbury is a cow farm, and it upsets the cows if you play past 12.30, and they don’t give milk in the morning. This is what had happened and that’s how the evening ended! And there was a whole bunch of mud and traffic, so it took about five hours to get off the site! There are some things I’ll never forget, and that show was one of them. There were helicopters flying overhead and the lights would be trained on the audience. Every time they went on the crowd, I was scanning to see what was going on.”

While other artists may (understandably) have opted to pull the performance, Vega insists that there was never a question about whether or not they would take to the stage. But how did it feel to play what was already set to be a landmark show to such a dramatic and potentially perilous backdrop?

“Once I’d committed to it, I just stuck with it and didn’t allow myself to think about anything other than playing each song,” she recalls with an almost matter of fact indifference. “Each song felt like it was 20 minutes long because time became elastic. And spatially it was weird for me because I was used to seeing Mikey, but he was playing off the stage flanked by two guards. I remember just feeling myself going through each song, probably didn’t talk very much, which I didn’t do much at festivals anyway. And then I had that weird ending [laughs]!

“The situation ended there - I don’t know what happened to the girl or her partner, but they never surfaced again. But Mikey had security for some time when we went on tour, so that lingered for about a year.”

As for her 2022 Worthy Farm set, proceedings were thankfully far less eventful.

“It was great, I always enjoy performing at Glastonbury,” she smiles with a delivery as cool as her unmistakable vocal sounds in song. “And this year was extra special because my daughter was with me and her father, Mitchell Froom, was playing with Crowded House, so she got to spend the whole weekend with both of us, which hardly ever happens, so it was really great.

“And I’m really looking forward to playing the Cambridge Folk Festival. I like the folk festivals. I’ll try not to be too abrasive – I’m playing with a guitar player called Gerry Leonard, he was David Bowie’s musical director, so we don’t always stay within the bounds of folk. I only play acoustic guitar, but we sometimes venture into other kinds of music. We’ll try not to be antagonistic and do all the folky stuff that everybody likes.”

Away from the stage, Vega has been occupying her time with an eclectic range of new projects and new material. For much of her career she has explored multiple creative outlets beyond the confines of the studio album, most notably with the 2011 one woman show Carson McCullers Talks About Love, a play written and performed by Vega about the titular American novelist. This was followed in 2016 by her ninth studio record Lover, Beloved: Songs From An Evening With Carson McCullers, which was based on the play she had written. In 2019, she also made a film of the show entitled Lover, Beloved, which premiered earlier this year at SXSW to positive reviews.

“We recorded the film in about 10 days, very cheap, and it was a thrill to see it on the big screen,” she enthuses. “I’ve been really happy about that, so we are trying to push it forward and get a release date and distribution. I was just thrilled with the reception that it had.”

Often having to split her time across such extracurricular activities, it’s perhaps unsurprising that new studio albums have been few and far between over the past couple of decades. Which isn’t to say her output hasn’t been prolific. During that spell she has released several live records as well as a clutch of largely conceptual albums, such as Beauty & Crime (2007) and Tales From The Realm Of The Queen Of Pentacles (2014). In addition, she has produced four volumes of Close Up – a collection of re-recorded and reworked versions of much of her catalog, divided into separate themes: Love Songs, People & Places, States Of Being and Songs Of Family. Though unable to offer any hints at a release date, Vega does reveal that she has been writing new music.

“I’ve been working on new material, writing lots about the social situation in America, which seems unbelievable to me,” she says with detectable disbelief in her voice. “But I love being able to go between the various artforms. I used to be a dancer. I also worked in clay and I sculpted, so I’m fascinated by all forms of art. It was something I found difficult as a child, how to express emotions. Anything that can help me do that, I try to go after. But in my heart and soul I think that songwriting is what I’m best at and that’s why I think it’s time to return to form (laughs).”

Given the vast array of art forms she has applied her skills to throughout her career, has her approach to songwriting changed much since those childhood years?

“It has changed a lot,” she says. In the beginning, I was thrilled if I wrote anything that was halfway good. And I did have a formula that I would follow, which was that on a Saturday night while my friends were out, I’d stay home and try to write a song. I’d get it to where I liked it and maybe there would be one little piece missing. I would sleep on it then finish it on Sunday morning. Then I’d be thrilled with it for the next week. These days I do it all different kind of ways. I’ve done it using guitar, I’ve done music first, lyrics first, I’ve done it starting from a title or an image in my mind, a name, it changes every time.”

Perhaps given the deceptively effortless nature of her music and the unhurried delivery of her performances, on record and in the studio, Vega observes that from a young age people assumed songwriting came naturally to her. This, she explains, wasn’t quite the case.

“Here’s the thing,” she considers. “I think people looking at me thought it was a natural gift. But I know how much effort it took. My first song took me three years to write, so to me it seemed endlessly long and tediously boring. But then I wrote another song within a couple of weeks of that one, and I thought it was really good. It’s like they say, you have this long period of working and working and working, and then it happens overnight. It really is like that. It’s a lot of labor and then from time to time it catches fire and your instincts take over. And you end up with something you’re really proud of.

Returning to the theme of social and political tensions in the US, does she see herself broaching the subject for another concept album?

“Well, I’d have to start with at least one or two songs,” she laughs. “It’s one thing to have the themes in your mind, but unless you actually sit down and write the individual songs, it’s just not going to happen. But yes, I’d like to. When I did Beauty & Crime that was like a response to 9/11, and that took six years to finish. There were all these little stories that were in the shadow of 9/11, so maybe something will happen like that. But to some degree I let go of control of it – I don’t know what songs are going to come through. I definitely wrote some songs that were inspired by Covid and the atmosphere during the pandemic, so maybe it’ll all come together. Ask me again in a year and maybe I’ll be able to tell you more.”

Here’s hoping we won’t be waiting quite that long.

You can listen to an extended version of this interview below.