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revisitingstoneybrook · 4 years

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#15 Little Miss Stoneybrook...and Dawn: Chapter 14

No spoilers for who wins the pageant but the foreshadowing is so obvious you can probably figure it out. And there’s bruised egos all around in the BSC.

The pageant officially starts! The host says this is the first annual (and probably the only, since we never hear of this pageant again) Little Miss Stoneybrook pageant and it's sponsored by Dewdrop Hair Care, “hair products for today's youth!” Kristy makes a stupid joke, wondering about next week's youth. Say what you will about Abby being a Kristy clone, at least her jokes aren't as dumb as that one.

The judges are introduced: the owner of Bellair's, the head of the Stoneybrook Dancing School (thankfully not Mme Noelle or else we'd be subjected to zee french ak-zent), Mrs. Peabody (I assume from the charm school Karen goes to at one point. Continuity!) and some doctor, according to Dawn. I wonder what it feels like to be a doctor and have “judging kiddie beauty pageants” as your side hustle. The host says he'd like to “send heartfelt good wishes to each and every little miss who is backstage right now” and Kristy says “Gag me!” Actually keeping with the times and using some 80s slang, good on you, Ann Martin.

“Marching music” is blasted through the auditorium and the girls trek across the stage for the opening procession. Sadly, no opening musical number:

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You know Karen would have shoved her way to the front with some lyrics she wrote herself like she did in her class Thanksgiving play.

Claire starts killing her odds of winning right away by tacking onto the end of her introduction, “Oh hi Mommy! Hi Daddy! Hi Mallory!” before she gets moved away and misses shaking Mrs. Peabody's hand. Oops. Maybe it's a good thing they cut her off or else the pageant would have taken much longer for her to name her whole family. And I'm surprised Mallory's there and isn't staging a protest with Jessi outside, complete with a bonfire of lipstick, hair curlers, and false eyelashes.

Margo does well, no one notices because she's overshadowed by the professional-ness of Sabrina Bouvier the Younger. I'm surprised she didn't say, “I'm Sabrina Bouvier, I'm seven years old and when I grow up, I want to be a sweetie pie! *bats eyelash implants*” Dawn tries to reassure herself that grace and charm really won't help in a beauty pageant. Maybe Sabrina isn't that talented, maybe her intelligence is hovering in the same area as Claudia's.

Now it's the part we've all been waiting for...the talent. The first contestant sings the national anthem while dressed in a red, white and blue sequined leotard. Claudia and Dawn share a laugh at how crappy she sounds and Claudia makes a mental note to ask the girl where she got the leotard from and whether they carry it in teen sizes. The second contestant sings a song she wrote called “I Love My Dog” but nothing is said about her because the true talent is taking the stage as she leaves. Myriah Perkins, in a pink leotard and tutu and black tap shoes, carrying a big lollipop, brings the house down with her rendition of “On the Good Ship Lollipop,” with a dance routine I'm guessing she choreographed herself. I'm surprised she isn't blindfolded and flawlessly juggling three hoops of fire too. She's met with tons of applause, and even cheering and whistling.

How do you follow that up? With Claire Pike! She says she doesn't want to do it but goes out anyway. For a moment she just stands there, doing nothing. Dawn eggs her on from offstage and Claire sings her Popeye song, does the hornpipe (and looks bored doing it), then sings again with the hand gestures. The audience, much to Dawn's relief, loves it. Claire hams it up even more and the audience laughs and gives her lots of applause. And, in a more shocking move, Kristy gives Dawn a thumbs-up for bringing Claire the Comedienne into the fray.

Claire's followed by a mediocre pianist and a failed baton twirler. Karen's up next and she goes onstage wearing her yellow flower girl dress. Dawn wonders if she's going to sing a love song. Oh no, Dawn. Instead of belting out “You Light Up My Life” or “Endless Love,” she sings the wonderful romantic ballad “The Wheels on the Bus.” FIFTEEN VERSES OF IT. Omitted from the text are the people in the audience screaming in agony as she makes up more verses on the spot, including “The people on the bus are tired and hot.” After the judges start looking at their watches, Karen takes a hint and finishes up. Surprisingly, Kristy doesn't act confident and smug and she and Dawn just shrug at each other.

A ballerina performs, Dawn remarks she's good (hold that thought, we'll return to it later) and then Sabrina the Younger comes onstage in a long black gown and white evening gloves with her hair piled up on her head. So like this?

It sounds like she’s going for a different look, because the song she sings is “Moon River.” Dawn says she's never heard of it but you'd think since the whole BSC is obsessed with old movies and Mary Anne loves Roman Holiday, which stars Audrey Hepburn, they'd know it’s the song from Breakfast at Tiffany's!

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Needless to say, Sabrina butchers it, but she smiles a lot and the judges like her. Next, Margo takes the stage with her banana. The triplets snicker at her when she peels the banana with her feet but she ignores them and recites the poem without any mistakes and gets lots of applause. Phew. And Dawn gets another thumbs-up from Kristy. Again, what alternate universe are we in if Kristy is acting nice to Dawn?

And, just as expected, Claudia's plan of having her own pageant contestant blows up in her face when Charlotte freaks out, completely forgets the passage she's going to read, and runs offstage in tears. Charlotte's crying so hard backstage Claudia goes and gets the Johanssens to take her home and she stays at the pageant to see what happens, looking crushed. Charlotte never should have been a contestant in the first place, Claudia, you suck for humiliating her for your own personal gain!

The beauty parade is next, and it's every girl for herself. Dawn hears Margo tell Claire to break a leg, and Claire tells Margo, “I hope you fall off the stage!” Mee-yow!

Question time! Dawn tells Mary Anne she's worried and Mary Anne says she is too. I mean, she really has no reason to be, since she's coaching Myriah Perkins. Anyway, the first question a little girl gets is “What do you like best about Stoneybrook?” She says the ice cream store and everyone laughs in an “awww cute!” way.

The next girl doesn't fare well either and then we get to Myriah Perkins. She's asked what she would change about the world. Channeling John Lennon, Myriah says (and I have to quote it in its entirety): “It would be wars. I would stop them. I would say to the people who were making the wars, 'Now you stop that. You settle this problem yourselves like grown-ups. Our children want peace.' That's what I'd change.” The crowd applauds as the little peace activist exits the stage and Claire comes on.

Claire's asked what she hopes for most of all. She says, “Santa Claus. I hope he's real,” in a terrified tone. The audience laughs in the same way they did for the first girl and Dawn groans as if she's just been asked to babysit for Jenny Prezzioso. Mary Anne reassures her and says Claire probably got nervous. Karen's next and she gets the infamous “If your house was on fire, what 3 things would you rescue?” question. Kristy makes a point to say out loud that she prepared her for this.

But guess what, Kristy? You aren't the Queen of Babysitting because Karen manages to kiss the crown goodbye too. She says she'd rescue Moosie her stuffed cat (so I guess the Little House is the one burning down...nice. Save the MANSION), Tickly her blanket, and “as many toys as I could carry.” She asks if she could rescue a fourth thing and says it would either be Andrew, or her pen that writes in three colors. Lovely that she thinks of toys before she thinks of her brother. And I guess she's letting Lisa and Seth burn. I'm surprised she didn't say something like, “My parents are divorced and I live in two houses. Can I rescue six things since I'm Karen Two-Two?”

Unfortunately, Sabrina the Younger uses up the “global peace” answer before Margo can get to it. Or maybe it's a blessing in disguise, since she didn't know what it is. Either way, Margo's asked what she would most wish to happen in the year 2010 and she freezes. I guess she was nervous but terrified too because 2010? This book was written in 1988. And even then, in BSC land, that's ages away! She'd be 29 by the time the BSC got to 2010! And Claudia would probably still be wearing neon green hair scrunchies and bright purple leggings at age 35. Margo obviously doesn't want to recycle the global peace answer and her mind goes blank, so she's ushered off the stage after 30 seconds of dead air.

Dawn freaks out backstage and openly admits she wanted one of her girls to win so she could show what a good babysitter she is! We're back to this shit again?! The others admit to this too and in one of the most ironic statements ever written in a BSC book, Kristy says, “Maybe we learned something, though. Even the best babysitter can't change a kid.” Now how many times can we all name before and after this where the BSC attempted to change a “problem child” or help out a kid with a problem because their horrible parents didn't know about it? So they all agree with Kristy, don't apologize for being bitches to each other and crowd around Mary Anne because they're confident Myriah has this in the bag.

The girls all line up onstage for the announcement of the winners, which is so obvious right now, even Claudia can predict it. Third place goes to Lisa Shermer, the ballerina from earlier. She wins $50 and fades into BSC obscurity. Second place is Myriah! She shrieks with delight because she just won a shopping spree at Toy City (which I would gladly take over the grand prize). Dawn even admitted she'd like it because she could buy Kid-Kit supplies. First thought ALWAYS to the BSC, just like a good cult club member. Well, Myriah's thrilled but Mary Anne screams in agony and wails, “Why isn't she the grand winner?!?!?” and we cut away from offstage before we can all drown in the deluge of Mary Anne's tears.

First prize, no surprise here, goes to Amber Dempsey Sabrina the Younger. Time for the song! “L the losers in her wake, I the income she will make...”

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She wins $100, gets a little tiara and bouquet of roses, her mom's weeping, Dawn calls the whole thing disgusting. Little does Sabrina the Younger know that's a magical tiara that will age her 6 years so by the time book #60 rolls around, she'll be 13!

#babysitters club #little miss stoneybrook...and dawn #dawn schafer #bsc #snark

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paradiseforlana · 7 years

Conversation

Lana Del Rey’s interview for Dazed Magazine:

Courtney Love: Is this the mysterious Lana Del Rey?

Lana Del Rey: Is this the one and only Courtney Love?

Lana Del Rey: So, we could just talk about whatever... Like those burning palm trees that you had in the ‘Malibu’ video. I didn’t think they were real!

Courtney Love: Back when rock’n’roll had budget, you mean? Oh my God, Lana, setting palm trees on fire was so fun. You thought they were CGI?

LDR: Yeah.

CL: God, you’re so young. I burned down palm trees. In my day, darling, you used to have to walk to school in the snow. So, since I toured with you, I got kind of obsessed and went down this Lana rabbit hole and became – not like I’m wearing a flower crown, Lana, don’t get ideas – but I absolutely love it. I love it as much as I love PJ Harvey.

LDR: That’s amazing because, maybe it’s slightly well documented, but I love everything you do, everything you have done – I couldn’t believe that you came on the tour with me.

CL: I read that you spend a lot of time mastering and mixing. Is that true on this new record?

LDR: Oh my God, yeah, it’s killing me. It’s because I spend so much time with the engineers working on the reverb. Because I actually don’t love a glossy production. If I want a bit of that retro feel, like that spring reverb or that Elvis slap, sometimes if you send it to an outside mixer they might try and dry things up a bit and push them really hard on top of the mix so it sounds really pop. And Born to Die did have a slickness to it, but, in general, I have an aversion to things that sound glossy all over – you have to pick and choose. And some people say, ‘It’s not radio-ready if it isn’t super-shiny from top to bottom.’ But you know this. Whoever mixed your stuff is a genius. Who did it?

CL: Chris Lord-Alge and Tom Lord-Alge. Kurt was really big on mastering. He sat in every mastering session like a fiend. I never was big on mastering because it’s such a pain in the butt.

LDR: It is a pain in the ass.

CL: I think my very, very favourite song of yours – you’re not gonna like this because it’s early – is ‘Blue Jeans’. I mean, ‘You’re so fresh to death and sick as ca-cancer’? Who does that?

LDR: I have to say, that track has this guy (Del Rey collaborator) Emile Haynie all over it. I remember ‘Blue Jeans’ was more of a Chris Isaak ballad and then I went in with him and it came out sounding the way it does now. I was like, ‘That’s the power of additional production.’ The song was on the radio in the UK, on Radio 1, and I remember thinking, ‘Fuck, that started off as a classical composition riff that I got from my composer friend, Dan Heath.’ It was, like, six chords that I started singing on.

CL: You have that lyric (on the song), ‘You were sorta punk rock, I grew up on hip hop.’ Did you really grow up on hip hop?

LDR: I didn’t find any good music until I was right out of high school, and I think that was just because, coming from the north country, we got country, we got NPR, and we got MTV.

CL: What I hear in your music is that you’ve created a world, you’ve created a persona, and you’ve created this kind of enigma that I never created but if I could go back I would create.

LDR: Are you even being serious right now? I don’t even know if your legacy could get any bigger. You’re one of the only people I know whose legacy precedes them. Just the name ‘Courtney Love’ is… You’re big, honey. You’re Hollywood. (laughs) Touring with Courtney Love (was), like, an Elizabeth Taylor diamond (for me).

CL: You know, I met Elizabeth Taylor. I was with Carrie Fisher at (Taylor’s) Easter party and she was taking six hours to come downstairs.

LDR: I love it.

CL: I looked at Carrie and I said, ‘This is not worth it,’ and Carrie said, ‘Oh, yes it is.’ So we snuck upstairs and, Lana, when you go past the Warhol of Elizabeth Taylor as you’re sneaking up the stairs and it says ‘001’, you start getting goosebumps. And then you see her room and it’s all lavender, like her eyes. And she’s in the bathroom getting her hair done by this guy named José Eber who wears a cowboy hat and has long hair, and I’m like, ‘What am I doing here? I’m not Hollywood royalty.’ And the first words out of her mouth are, like, ‘Fuck you, Carrie, how ya doin’?’ She was so salty but such a goddess at the same time.

LDR: She was so salty. The fact that she married Richard Burton twice – and all the stories you hear about those famous, crazy, public brawls – she was just up for it. Up for the trouble.

“What I hear in your music is that you’ve created a world, you’ve created a persona, and you’ve created this kind of enigma that I never did’’ — Courtney Love to Lana Del Rey

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CL: You know what, darling? I started real early. I started stalking Andy Warhol before I could even think about it. And you kind of did the same, from my understanding. That ‘I want to make it’ thing. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

LDR: No, there’s not. There’s nothing wrong with it when you do the rest of it for the right reasons. If music is really in your blood and you don’t want to do anything else and you don’t really care about the money until later. It’s also about the vibe, not to be cliched. And the people. I think we had that in common. It was about wanting to go to shows, wanting to have your own show – living, breathing, eating, all of it.

CL: Can I ask you about your time in New Jersey? Was that a soul-searching time?

LDR: Oh, I don’t even know if I should have said to anyone that I was living in that trailer in New Jersey but, stupidly, I did this interview from the trailer, in 2008.

CL: I saw it!

LDR: It’s cringey, it’s cringey. (laughs)

CL: You look so cute, though.

LDR: I thought I was rockabilly. I was platinum. I thought I had made it in my own way.

CL: I understand completely.

LDR: The one thing I wish I’d done was go to LA instead of New York. I had been playing around for maybe four years, just open mics, and I got a contract with this indie label called 5 Points Records in 2007. They gave me $10,000 and I found this trailer in New Jersey, across the Hudson - Bergen Light Rail. So, I moved there, I finished school and I made that record (Lana Del Ray a.k.a. Lizzy Grant), which was shelved for two and a half years, and then came out for, like, three months. But I was proud of myself. I felt like I had arrived, in my own way. I had my own thought and it was kind of kitschy and I knew it was going to sort of influence what I was doing next. It was definitely a phase. (laughs)

CL: But you have records about being a ‘Brooklyn Baby’. You can write about New York adeptly and I cannot. I tried to write a song about a tragic girl in New York, going down Bleecker Street – this girl couldn’t afford Bleecker Street, so the song made no sense, right? (laughs) I did my time there, but it chased me away. I couldn’t do it because I wouldn’t go solo. I had to have a band.

LDR: I wanted a band so badly. I feel like I wouldn’t have had some of the stage fright I had when I started playing bigger shows if (I had) a real group and we were in it together. I really wanted that camaraderie. I actually didn’t even find that until a couple of years ago, I would say. I’ve been with my band for six years and they’re great, but I wished I had people – I fantasised about Laurel Canyon.

CL: I wanted the camaraderie. The alternative bands in my neighbourhood were the (Red Hot Chili) Peppers and Jane’s (Addiction). I knew Perry (Farrell, Jane’s Addiction frontman) and I went to high school for, like, ten seconds with two Peppers and a guy named Romeo Blue who became Lenny Kravitz. I remember being an extra in a Ramones video and he stopped by, when he was dating Lisa Bonet from The Cosby Show and it was a big deal.

LDR: See? You didn’t really see that in New York. When I got there, The Strokes had had a moment, but that was kind of it. LA has always been the epicentre of music, I feel.

CL: LA is easier. People have garages. And then as you go up the coast, in Washington and Oregon people have bigger houses and bigger garages, and people have parents. I didn’t have parents, and you – well, you had parents, but you were on your own.

LDR: Yeah. You know that song of yours (‘Awful’) that says, ‘(Just shut up,) you’re only 16’? I think there are different types of people. There are people who heard, ‘What do you know? You’re just a kid,’ and then there are people who got a lot of support (from the line), like, ‘Go for it, go for your dreams.’ (laughs) And I think when you don’t have that, you get kind of stuck at a certain age. Randomly, in the last few years, I feel like I’ve grown up. Maybe I’ve just had time to think about everything, process everything. I’ve gotten to move on and think about how it feels now, singing songs I wrote ten years ago. It does feel different. I was almost reliving those feelings on stage until recently. It’s weird listening back to my stuff. Today, I was watching some of your old videos and this footage of you playing a big festival. The crowd was just girls – just young girls for rows and rows. I was reminded of how vast that influence was on teenagers. And – going back to enigma and fame and legacy – you know, those girls who have grown up and girls who are 16 now, they relate to you in the exact same way as they did right when you started. And that’s the power of your craft. You’re one of my favourite writers.

CL: You’re one of mine, so, checkmate. (laughs)

LDR: What you did was the epitome of cool. And there’s a lot of different music going on, but adolescents still know when something comes authentically from somebody’s heart. It might not be the song that sells the most, but when people hear it, they know it. Are you a John Lennon fan?

CL: When I hear ‘Working Class Hero’, it’s a song I wish to God I could write. I wouldn’t ever cover it. I mean, Marianne Faithfull covered it beautifully, but I would never cover it because I think Marianne did a great job and that’s all that needs to be said.

LDR: I felt that way when I covered ‘Chelsea Hotel (#2)’, the Leonard Cohen song, but when I was doing more acoustic shows, I couldn’t not do it.

CL: I don’t have your range. I’ve tried to sing along to ‘Brooklyn Baby’ and ‘Dark Paradise’ and this new one, ‘Love’. You go high, baby.

LDR: I’ve got some good low ones for you. You know what would be good, is that song, ‘Ride’. I don’t sing it in its right octave during the shows because it’s too low for me. But I’ve been thinking about doing something with you for a little while now. Then after we did the Endless Summer tour, we were thinking we should at least write, or we should just do whatever and maybe you could come down to the studio and just see what came out.

CL: When we were on tour, our pre-show chats were very productive for me.

LDR: Me too. That was a real moment of me counting my blessings. I just wanted to stay in every single moment and remember all of it, because it was so amazing.

CL: Likewise. It was really fun coming into your room. My favourite part of the tour was in Portland, getting you vinyl that I felt you needed. (laughs)

LDR: When you left the room, I was just running my hand over all the vinyl like little gems, like, ‘I can’t believe I have these (records) that Courtney gave to me, it’s so fucking amazing.’ And we were in Portland, too. It felt surreal.

CL: Yeah, I don’t like going there much but I went there with you. We have this in common, too: we both ran away to Britain. If I could live anywhere in the world, I’d live in London.

LDR: If I could live anywhere in the world other than LA, I’d live in London. In the back of my mind, I always feel like I could maybe end up there.

CL: I know I’m going to end up there. I know what neighbourhood I’m going to end up in, and I know that I want to be on the Thames. I subscribe to this magazine called Country Life which is just real-estate porn and fox hunting. It’s amazing. OK, so, if you weren’t doing you, what would you do?

LDR: You take ‘red’. I’ll trade for ‘whore’. I’m so lucky.

CL: I love this new song (‘Love’).

LDR: Thank you. I love the new song, too. I’m glad it’s the first thing out. It doesn’t sound that retro, but I was listening to a lot of Shangri-Las and wanted to go back to a bigger, more mid-tempo, single-y sound. The last 16 months, things were kind of crazy in the US, and in London when I was there. I was just feeling like I wanted a song that made me feel a little more positive when I sang it. And there’s an album that’s gonna come out in the spring called Lust for Life. I did something I haven’t ever done, which is not that big of a deal, but I have a couple of collabs on this record. Speaking of John Lennon, I have a song with Sean Lennon. Do you know him?

CL: I do, I like him.

LDR: It’s called ‘Tomorrow Never Came’. I don’t know if you’ve ever felt this way, but when I wrote it I felt like it wasn’t really for me. I kept on thinking about who this song was for or who could do it with me, and then I realised that he would be a good person. I didn’t know if I should ask him because I actually have a line in it where I say, ‘I wish we could go back to your country house and put on the radio and listen to our favourite song by Lennon and Yoko.’ I didn’t want him to think I was asking him because I was namechecking them. Actually, I had listened to his records over the years and I did think it was his vibe, so I played it for him and he liked it. He rewrote his verse and had extensive notes, down to the mix. And that was the last thing I did, decision-wise. I haven’t mixed the record, but the fact that ‘Love’ just came out and Sean kind of finished up the record, it felt very meant-to-be. Because that whole concept of peace and love really is in his veins and in his family. Then, I also have Abel (Tesfaye), The Weeknd. He is actually on the title track of the record, ‘Lust for Life’. Maybe that’s kind of weird to have a feature on the title track, but I really love that song and we had said for a while that we were gonna do something; I did stuff on his last two records.

CL: Do you have a singular producer or several producers?

LDR: Rick Nowels. He actually did stuff with Stevie Nicks a while ago. He works really well with women. I did the last few records with him. Even with Ultraviolence which I did with Dan (Auerbach), I did the record first with Rick, and then I went to Nashville and reworked the sound with Dan. So, yeah, Rick Nowels is amazing, and these two engineers – with all the records that I’ve worked on with Rick, they did a lot of the production as well. You would love these two guys. They’re just super-innovative. I wanted a bit of a sci-fi f lair for some of the stuff and they had some really cool production ideas. But yeah, that’s pretty much it. I mean, Max Martin –

CL: Wait, you wrote with Max Martin? You went to the compound?

LDR: Have you been there?

CL: No. I’ve always wanted to work with Max Martin.

LDR: So basically, ‘Lust for Life’ was the first song I wrote for the record, but it was kind of a Rubik’s Cube. I felt like it was a big song but... it wasn’t right. I don’t usually go back and re-edit things that much, because the songs end up sort of being what they are, but this one song I kept going back to. I really liked the title. I liked the verse. John Janick was like, ‘Why don’t we just go over and see what Max Martin thinks?’ So, I flew to Sweden and showed him the song. He said that he felt really strongly that the best part was the verse and that he wanted to hear it more than once, so I should think about making it the chorus. So I went back to Rick Nowels’ place the next day and I was like, ‘Let’s try and make the verse the chorus,’ and we did, and it sounded perfect. That’s when I felt like I really wanted to hear Abel sing the chorus, so he came down and rewrote a little bit of it. But then I was feeling like it was missing a little bit of the Shangri-Las element, so I went back for a fourth time and layered it up with harmonies. Now I’m finally happy with it. (laughs) But we should do something. Like, soon.

CL: I would like that. That would be awesome.

Lust for Life is out this spring.

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wacco-archive · 7 years

Text

Full Transcription: Lana and Courtney Dazed Interview

LDR: So, we could talk just talk about whatever...like those burning palm trees that you had in the 'Malibu' video. I didn't think they were real!

CL: Back when rock'n'roll has a budget, you mean? oh my God, Lana, setting palm trees on fire was so fun. You thought they were CGI?

LDR: Yeah.

CL: God you're so young. I burned down palm trees. In my day darling you used to have to walk to school in the snow. So since I toured with you I kind of got obsessed and went down this Lana rabbit hole and became - not like I'm wearing a flower crown, Lana don't get me wrong - but I absolutely love it. I love it as much as I love PJ Harvey.

LDR: That's amazing because maybe it's slightly well documented but I love everything you do, everything you have done - I couldn't believe that you came on tour with me.

CL: I read that you spend a lot of time mastering and mixing - is this true on the new record? LDR: Oh my god yeah, it's killing me. It's because I spend so much time with the engineers working on the reverb. I actually don't love a glossy production. If I want a bit of that retro feel, like that spring reverb or that Elvis slap, sometimes if you send it to an outside mixer they might try and dry things up a bit and push them really hard on top of the mix so it sounds really pop. And Born to Die did have a slickness to it but in general I have an aversion to things that sound glossy all over - you have to pick and choose. And some people say 'it's not radio ready if it isn't super shiny from top to bottom'. But you know this. Whoever mixed your stuff is a genius. Who did it? CL: Chris Lord-Alge and Tom Lord-Alge. Kurt was really big on mastering. He sat in every mastering session like a fiend. I never was big on mastering because it's such a pain in the butt.

LDR: It is a pain in the ass.

CL: I think my very very favourite song of yours - you're not gonna like this because it's early - is 'Blue Jeans'. I mean 'You're so fresh to death and sick as ca-cancer?' Who does that? LDR: I have to say that track has this guy (Del Rey Collaborater) Emile Haynie all over it. I remember 'Blue Jeans' was more of a Chris Isaak ballad and then I went in with him and it came out sounding the way it does now. I was like 'that's the power of production.' The song was in the radio in the UK on Radio 1 and I remember thinking 'F*ck, that started off as a classical composition riff that I got from my composer friend Dan Heath.' It was like six chords that I started singing on.

CL: You have that lyric 'You were sorta punk rock, I grew up on hip-hop.' DId you really grow up on hip-hop?

LDR: I didn't find any good music until I was right out of high school, coming from the north country, we got country, we got NPR and we got MTV. So Eminem was my version of hip-hop until I was 18. Then mayb I found A Tribe Called Quest.

CL: Have you met Marshall Mathers? LDR: No. Sometimes he namechecks me in his songs. I called the head of my label (Interscope CEO) John Janick and I was like 'OK in this last song (Big Sean's "No Favors") when Eminem says 'I'm about to run over a chick, Del Rey CD in". Did he mean he wanted to run me over or was he listening to me while he ran someone over?'. And John was like, 'No, no he was listening to you while he ran someone over' and I was 'Ok, cool.'

CL: You got namechecked by Eminem? oh my god that is a jewel in the crown.

LDR: Just a little ruby.

CL: Yeah, it's not really a diamond, but it's a ruby.

LDR: Not like touring with Courtney Love. That's like an Elizabeth Taylor diamond.

CL: You know, I met Elizabeth Taylor. I was with Carrie FIsher at Taylor's easter party and she was taking six hours to come downstairs.

LDR: I love it.

CL: I looked at Carrie and said 'This is not worth it,' and Carrie said, 'Oh yes it is.' So we snuck upstairs and, Lana, when you go past the Warhol of Elizabeth Taylor as you're sneaking up the stairs and it says '001' you start getting goosebumps. And then you see her room and it's all lavender like her eyes. And she's in the bathroom getting her hair done by this guy named Jose Eber who wears a cowboy hat and has long hair and I'm like 'What am I doing here? I'm not Hollywood royalty. And the first words out of her mouth are like, 'F*ck you, Carrie, how ya doin'?' She was so salty but such a goddess at the same time.

LDR: She was so salty. The fact that she married Richard Burton twice - and all the stories you heart about those famous, crazy, public brawls - she was just up for it. Up for the trouble.

CL: So back to you. What I hear in your music is that you've created a world, you've created a persona, and you've created this kind of enigma that I never created but if I could so back I would create.

LDR: Are you even being serious right now? I don't even know if your legacy could get any bigger. You're one of the only people I know whose legacy precedes them. Just the name Courtney Love is...You're big honey. You're Hollywood (laughs).

CL: You know what darling? I started real early. I started stalking Andy Warhol before I could even think about it. And you kind of did the same, from my understanding. That 'I want to make it' thing. And there's nothing wrong with that.

LDR: No. there's not. There's nothing wrong with it when you do it for the right reasons. If music is really in your blood and you don't want to do anything else and you dont really care about the money until later. It's also about the vibe, not tobe cliched. And the people. I think we had that in common. It was about wanting to go to shows, wanting to have your own show - living, breathing, eating, all of it.

CL: Can I ask you about your time in New York? Was that a soul searching time? LDR: Oh I don't even know if I should have said to anyone that I was living in a trailer in New Jersey but stupidly, I did this interview from the trailer, in 2008.

CL: I saw it! LDR: It's cringey, it's cringey (laughs).

CL: You look so cute though.

LDR: I thought I was a rockabilly. I was platinum. I thought I had made it in my own way.

CL: I understand completely.

LDR: The one thing I wish I'd done was go to LA instead of New York. I had been playing around for maybe 4 years, just open mics, and I got a contract with this indie label called 5 Points Records in 2007. They gave me 10,000 dollars & I found this trailer in New Jersey, across the Hudson-Begren Light Rail. So I moved there, I finished school and I made that record (LDR AKA Lizzy Grant) which was shelved for 2 and a half years and then came out for like 3 months. But I was proud of myself. I felt like I had arrived, in my own way. I had my own thought and it was kind of kitschy and I knew it was going to sort of influence what I was doing next. It was definitely a phase (laughs).

CL: But you have records about being a Brooklyn Baby. You can write about New York adeptly and I cannot. I tried to write a song about a tragic girl in New York going down Bleecker Street - this girl couldn't afford Bleecker Street so the song made no sense, right? (laughs) I did my time there, but it chased me away. I couldn't do it because I wouldn't go solo, I had to have a band.

LDR: I wanted a band so badly. I feel I wouldn't have had some of the stage fright I had when I started playing bigger shows if I had a real group and we were in it together. I really wanted that camaraderie. I actually didn't even find that until a couple of years ago, I would say. I've been with my band for 6 years and they're great, but I wished I had people - I fantasised about Laurel Canyon.

CL: I wanted the camraderie. The alternative bands in my neighborhood were the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Jane's Addiction. I knew Perry (Farrel, Janes Addiction) and I went to high school for like, ten seconds with two Peppers and a guy named Romeo Blue who became Lenny Kravitz. I remember being an extra in a Ramones video and he stopped by, when he was dating Lisa Bonet from The Cosby Show and it was a big deal.

LDR: See? You didn't really see that in New York. When I got there, The Strokes had had a moment, but that was kind of it. LA had always been the epicentre of music, I feel.

CL: LA is easier. People have garages. And then as you go up the coast, in Washington and Oregon people have bigger houses and bigger garages and people have parents. I didn't have parents. and well, you had parents, but you were on your own.

LDR: Yeah. You know that song of yours (Awful) that says, '(Just shut up) you're only 16'? I think there are different types of people. There are people who head 'What do you know, you're just a kid?' and then there are people who got a lot of support (from the line) like 'Go for it, go for your dreams.' (laughs) And I think, when you don't have that, you get kind of stuck at a certain age. Randomly, in the last few years, I feel like I've grown up. Maybe I've just had time to think about everything. I've gotten to move on and think about how it feels now, singing songs I wrote ten years ago. It does feel different. I was almost reliving those feelings on stage until recently. It's weird listening back to my stuff. Today I was watching some of your old videos and the footage of you playing a big festival. The crowd was just girls - just young girls, for rows and rows. I was reminded of how vast that influence was on teenagers. And - going back to enigma and fame and legacy - you know, those girls who have grown up and girls who are 16 now, they relate to you in the exact same way as they did right when you started. And that's the power of your craft. You're one of my favourite writers.

CL: You're one of mine, so, checkmate (laughs).

LDR: What you did was the epitome of cool. And there's lots of different music going on but adolescents still know when something comes authentically from somebody's heart. It might not be the song that sells the most, but when people hear it, they know it. Are you a John Lennon fan? CL: When I hear 'Working Class Hero' it's a song I wish to God I could write. I wouldn't ever cover it. I mean, Marianne Faithfull covered it beautifully, but I would never cover it because I think Marianne did a great job and that's all that needs to be said.

LDR: I felt that way when I covered Chelsea Hotel No2, the Leonard Cohen song, but when I was doing more acoustic shows, I couldn't not do it.

CL: I don't have your range. I've tried to sing along to Brooklyn Baby and Dark Paradise, and this new one, Love. You go high, baby.

LDR: I've got some good low ones for you. You know what would be good, is that song, Ride. I don't sing it in its right octave during the shows because it's two low for me. But I've been thinking about doing something with you for a little while now. Then after we did the Endless Summer tour, we were thinking we should at least write, or we should just do whatever and maybe you could come to the studio and just see what came out.

CL: When we were on tour, our pre-show chats were very productive for me.

LDR: Me too. That was a real moment of counting my blessings. I just wanted to stay in every single moment and remember all of it, because it was so amazing.

CL: Likewise. It was really fun coming into your room. My favourite part of the tour was in Portland, getting you vinyl that I felt you needed. (laughs)

LDR: When you left the room, I was just running my hand all over the vinyl like little gems, like 'I can't believe that I have these (records) that Courtney Love gave to me, it's so f*cking amazing.' And we were in Portland too. It felt surreal.

CL: Yeah, I don't like going there much but I went there with you. We have this in common, too: we both ran away to Britain. If I could live anywhere in the world, I'd live in London.

LDR: If I could live anywhere in the world other than LA, I'd live in London. In the back of my mind, I always feel like I could maybe end up there.

CL: I know I'm going to end up there. I know what neighborhood I'm going to end up in, and I know that I want to be on the Thames. I subscribe to this magazine called 'Country Life' which is just real estate porn and fox hunting. It's amazing. OK so, if you weren't doing you, what would you do?

LDR: Do you have a really clear answer for this, yourself? CL: Yeah, I would work with teenage girls. Girls that are in halfway houses.

LDR: That's got you all over it. I'm selfish. I would do something that would put me by the beach. I would be like, a bad lifeguard (laughs). I'd come help you on the weekends though.

CL: Do you like being in Malibu better than being in town? LDR: I like the idea of it. People don't always go out to visit you in Malibu. So there's a lot of alone time, which is kind of like, hmmm. I'm not in (indie rock enclave) Silver Lake but I love all the stuff that's going on around there. I guess I'd have to say I prefer town, but I've got my half time Malibu fantasy.

CL: The only bad thing that can happen in Malibu really is getting on Etsy and overspending.

LDR: Oh my God, woman...(laughs) Tell me about it. Late night sleepless Etsy binges.

CL: Regretsy binges. Ok, so lyrically, you have some tropes and themes and one of them is the colour red. Red dresses, scarlet, nail polish...I kind of want to steal that.

LDR: You need to take over that, because I think I've got to relinquish the red.

CL: Well, I overuse the word "wh*re".

LDR: You take red, I'll trade for wh*re. I'm so lucky.

CL: I love this new song (Love).

LDR: Thank you. I love the new song too. I'm glad it's the first thing out. It doesn't sound that retro, but I was listening to a lot of Shangri-Las and wanted to go back to a bigger more mid-tempo, single-y sound. The last 16 months, things were kind of crazy in the US, and in London, when I was there. I was just feeling like I wanted a song that made me feel a little more positive when I sang it. And there's an album that's gonna come out in the spring called Lust for Life. I did something I haven't ever done, which is not that big of a deal, but I have a couple of collabs. Speaking of John Lennon, I have a song with Sean Lennon. Do you know him? CL: I do. I like him

LDR: It's called Tomorrow Never Came. I don't know if you've ever felt this way, but when I wrote it I felt like it wasn't really for me. I kept on thinking about who this song was for or who could do it with me and then I realised that he would be a good person. I didn't know if I should ask him because actually I have a line in it where I say "I wish we could go back to your country house and put on the radio and listen to our favourite song by Lennon and Yoko". I didn't want him to think I was asking him because I was namechecking them. Actually, I had listened to his records over the years and I did think it was his vibe, so I played it for him and he liked it. He rewrote his verse and had extensive notes, down to the mix. And that was the last thing I did, decision wise. I haven't mixed the record, but that fact that Love just came out and Sean kind of finished up the record, it felt very meant to be. Because that whole concept of peace and love really is in his veins and in his family. Then I also have Abel (Tesfaye), the Weeknd. He is actually on the title track of the record, Lust for Life. Maybe that's kind of weird to have a feature on the title track, but I really love that song and we had said for a while that we where gonna do something; I did stuff on his last two records.

CL: Do you have a singular producer or several producers?

LDR: Rick Nowels. He actually did stuff with Stevie Nicks a while ago. He works really well with women. I did the last few records with him. Even with Ultraviolence, which I did with Dan (Auerbach) I did the record first with Nick, and then I went to Nashville and reworked the sound with Dan. So yeah, Rick Nowels is amazing and these two engineers - with all the records that I've worked on with Rick, they did a lot of the production as well. You would love these two guys. They're just super innovative. I wanted a bit of a sci-fi flair for some of the stuff and they had some really cool production ideas. But yeah, that's pretty much it. I mean, Max Martin -

CL: Wait, you wrote with Max Martin? You went to the compound?

LDR: Have you been there? CL: No. I've always wanted to work with Max Martin.

LDR: So basically, Lust for Life was the first song that I wrote for the record but it was kind of like a Rubik's Cube. I felt like it was a big song but....it wasn't right. I don't usually do back and re-edit things that musch, because the songs end up sort of being what they are, but this one song I kept going back to. I really liked the title. I liked the verse. John Janick was like, 'Why don't we just go over and see what Max Martin thinks?' So I flew to Sweden and showed him the song. He said that he felt really strongly that the best part was the verse and that he wanted to hear it more than once, so I should think about making it the chorus. So I went back to Rick Nowels place the next day and I was like, 'Let's try and make the verse the chorus' and we did, and it sounded perfect. That's when I felt like I really wanted to hear Abel sing the chorus, so he came down and rewrote a little bit of it. But then I was feeling like it was missing a little bit of the Shangri-La element, so I went back for a fourth time and layered it up with harmonies. Now I'm finally happy with it (laughs). But we should do something. Like, soon.

CL: I would like that. That would be awesome.

Lust for Life is out this spring.

#lana del rey #courtney love #dazed and confused

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