Wednesday, October 15, 1997
San Francisco Chronicle
When Paula Cole wrote "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?" she intended it as a satire on outdated American values. As the single went to the top of the charts, it became clear that many people took its lyrics literally.
"Unfortunately (cowboys are) still among us," Cole sighs. "Except I'm hoping the world becomes a little more aware of the stupidity . . . of Phillip Morris, that John Wayne's real name was Marion Morrison and he was afraid of horses."
Cole, 29, a onetime resident of San Francisco, has spent much of the past year touring in support of her album "This Fire." Tomorrow she appears at the Warfield.
Her San Francisco years, she says, were "very introspective, very lonely." She moved here in 1991 after growing up in Massachusetts, "wanting to see more of life. I tried to form a band in the Bay Area, but it didn't work out. It forced me to just be a lonely hermit songwriter in my bedroom, and I wrote all the songs that became `Harbinger.'"
"Harbinger," her debut album, is a work of cathartic honesty and painful vulnerability. "It's like when a snake molts," Cole says. "My albums are like the molted skins that I've left behind. `Harbinger' was a time when I very much wanted to be taken seriously as a human being and artist. Not necessarily as a woman -- I didn't want to be sexualized."
In addition, she says, "I wanted to produce it myself, and I was told `no.' " Although "I'm So Ordinary" became a minor hit, problems with Cole's record label, Imago, prevented the album from finding a wider audience. Instead, she took a job singing with Peter Gabriel on his 1993-94 tour, and her whole life turned upside down.
"Musically I was ready, I was very there, I felt like I was a member of the band," Cole says. "But socially I was very not ready." She was by far the youngest member of the tour, and one of only four women among 60 Englishmen. "When I was singing the music, that's when I was my happiest.
"I learned a lot by observing Peter, observing him doing great things and observing him doing -- bad things. It's helped prepare me to be where I am now, and to be more comfortable with success. Because it really is a bizarre job."
After working with Gabriel, Cole relocated to New York and began working on "This Fire," an even braver album than "Harbinger." She was allowed to produce the record herself, "so I think there's a lot more passion in it. I think it's much more raw, which I like. And . . . I think I had a little more courage to be more free about being a woman. And not feeling so victimized by the patriarchy."
The public response has been phenomenally large, resulting in her nomination for an MTV Video Music Award as well as sell-out crowds for Lilith Fair, where Cole was a supporting performer for three weeks of its summer run.
Cole incorporates drumming, intricate hand- clapping and human beat box work into her songs, a rare trait among today's singer-songwriters.
"My drummer Jay helped me to start listening to what the bass player and the drummer were doing in the music, not just the singer. I would love to be a drummer, I think."
Some of Cole's songs are so raw she has trouble singing them. "Throwing Stones," which chronicles a knockdown fight between lovers, has been an uncomfortable number for Cole at times.
"When you write a song, you immortalize an emotion," she explains. "You give a lot of power to it every time you perform it. I don't feel that rage anymore toward that person. The good thing is, if I have repressed rage from other areas of my life, it definitely comes out in the song."
Cole expects to be touring well into next year, after which she hopes to take some time off before returning to the studio.
"I'd like to release my next album in 1999," she says. "Although it's just a number and I don't believe in the concept of linear time, I think (the millennium) will cause a lot of ordinary citizens to stop and ponder their purpose for being. . . . I would like my album to be put out before the millennium so that maybe I can coincide with that movement."
In the meantime, fans can count on Cole's fiery performances. Her live shows, she says, speak "far more eloquently than I could with my mouth, using words. I need to be manifesting energy like that because I don't think I'd be alive if I didn't have music. I really don't. I need it. It's like breathing. It's like eating. It gives meaning to my life."