June 15, 1991

Publication title: The Globe and Mail, vol. -, Iss. -, pg. –
Place: Unknown
Writer: Liam Lacey

In Person

In the storefront headquarters of Nettwerk Records on West Fourth Street in Vancouver, the atmosphere is something like a bustling campus radio station. Posters for the company’s acts – Grapes of Wrath, Skinny Puppy, Lava Hay – cover the walls. The staff, in shorts, sweatshirts and sneakers, work at Macintosh computers, with telephones chained to their ears.

When Sarah McLachlan, 23, in a white sweatshirt and black lycra bicycle shorts, emerges from one of the back rooms, she looks more like a wandering bicycle courier than one of the label’s young stars.
One of the reasons things are busy at Nettwerk these days is the preparation for McLachlan’s second record, which comes out on June 21. Entitled Solace, the record is a sequel to Touch, released in 1988 when McLachlan was just 20, and which established her as a new force in the Canadian music industry.
Touch sold more than 50,000 copies in Canada, enough to qualify for gold record status, and to measure as a notable success for a debut release on a small label. The Canadian press was adulatory. Adjectives like “ethereal”, “angelic”, “soaring” and “spell-binding” were thickly applied, and the image of McLachlan that emerged, as a kind of Celtic fairy princess, seemed to seal her fate as Canada’s answer to Kate Bush. Over lunch in a Chinese cafe across from the record company, where she talks with hard-headed clarity and a salty vocabulary about her adventures in the pop-music business, the gossamer image seems transparently silly.

“I didn’t know what ‘image’ was,” she says, of her start in the record business. “But people told me, ‘this is what you are’ so I figured I better play along. My manager at the time thought it was a good approach to be this ethereal, whimsical waif. It wasn’t particularily easy to live up to. I think I disappointed a lot of people when they actually met me.”

McLachlan was originally discovered by Mark Jowett, one of the founders of Nettwerk, when his own band Moev was touring Nova Scotia. McLachlan was 17, playing a rare gig for a band called October’s Game. She had studied 12 years of music in Nova Scotia – guitar, piano and voice – and had won several vocal awards.

Jowett wanted her to join his band, but when Nettwerk offered her a five-year contract to come to Vancouver and become a recording star, her parents flatly refused. Two years later, after she graduated from high school, she finally made the trip, took a job at a Vancouver sandwich shop and started writing.

“I didn’t know what I had to offer on that first record. Nettwerk signed me and said, ‘Can you write some songs,’ and I said. ‘Uh, yeah, sure, I guess.’ ”

That first record, with musicians accompanying McLachlan’s soaring vocal acrobatics and pensive songs, was enough to gain her attention of not only press, but Arista Records in the United States, the label behind the success of megastar Whitney Houston. Arista repackaged Touch for the American market, where it sold respectably. The company also agreed to help bankroll her new record.

“Whitney Houston,” jokes McLachlan, “butters my bread.” The American critics were effusive as their Canadian counterparts, comparing McLachlan to Kate Bush and Jane Siberry, even calling her Canada’s best export since Joni Mitchell.

McLachlan decided “the next album had to be really good, it had to be huge. I felt these expectations were on me, and it was what I wanted as well. I was determined that I would give everything I could to make this a good record.”

The first step was to draw up a list of potential producers. To her surprise, one candidate, Pierre Marchand, actually sent a copy of his own music. “That really got my interest,” she said. “I knew I wanted a musician to work with, not just some engineer who was turning the knobs in the studio.”
Marchand was little-known, but his credits are inspiring. A keyboard player for the Montreal band, Luba, he was a friend and sometimes student of Daniel Lanois, the Manitoba-born producer who has emerged as one of the most influential producers in contemporary music, with such acts as Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno, U2 and the Neville Brothers. As well, Marchand’s first production credit was a dandy : Kate and Anna McGarrigle’s sonically elegant, moody recent album, Heartbeats Accelerating.

Musically, the Marchand-McLachlan combination may have been a marriage made in heaven; from the record company’s point of view, it was more like a disaster. Both musician and producer were painstaking perfectionists, in a business where efficiency and crisp professionalism are treasured.

“The first problem was, I went into the studio insufficiently prepared,” admits McLachlan. Arista expected a record that would take, perhaps, a month and a half to record. After two months, they asked for some demonstration of what McLachlan was doing. She sent them “some bare skeletons of what we were creating. I knew they weren’t ready. They needed work, nuturing, but I hoped they would see I was on the right track. “The answer that came back from Arista was that they were ‘very disappointed’ with my progress. I knew what we were doing was good work, and I was almost devastated that they couldn’t see it. They couldn’t see what I was doign working on the radio. They couldn’t hear a hit. And I thought they always thought of me as an ‘alternative’ act.

“I could care less about radio, and while I’ve eventually come to understand that record companies are businesses whose job is to make money, I found them pretty short-sighted. I wasn’t about to stick some hip-hop sounds on the record to make it sound like the radio. I figure if it’s good, it has the best chance of becoming a single. And if it doesn’t become a single, at least I have the satisfaction of knowing that it’s good anyway.”

“I got sick of the pressure,” says McLachlan. “So I said, ‘Screw it,” and we went to New Orleans.” Marchand and McLachlan set up rented recording equipment in a room in Daniel Lanois’s New Orleans home. (”We called it Nomad Studios,” says McLachlan.) Using the minimum of modern effects, and some top-notch musicians, they continued piecing the record together. The players included bassists Jocelyn Lanois (Daniel’s sister, formerly of Crash Vegas and Martha and the Muffins) and Daryl of The Nevilles, and Bill Dillard, guitarist and mandolinist with Robbie Robertson and Joni Mitchell.

Eventually, Arista backed off and waited patiently, along with Nettwerk back in Vancouver, to see what McLachlan would come up with. Marchand worked at changing McLachlan’s sound : “He made me sing lower, so my voice was closer to my speaking voice, and showed more of my own personality. We concentrated on using the voice for the purposes of the songs. On the first record I did a lot of classical working, you know. Look at what my voice can do. This time, I was really singing the songs.”

After a year, and recording sessions in Montreal, New Orleans and Vancouver, McLachlan’s record was finally ready, and she had no doubt what the reception would be. “When Arista finally heard it, they flipped,” says McLachlan. “I knew it would be there. But they didn’t trust me before.”
McLachlan thinks there’s a lesson buried somewhere in her experiences of the past year.
“Making this record was the best musical education I’ve had. And right now, I’m as happy as I’ve ever been because of that, because making music is what I want to do. I don’t need to sell a million records to feel satisfied. I just need to make a living from creating music. And you know what? I’m a long way fom rich, but right now, I’ve got a nice apartment, I’ve got a record I’m proud of, and I am making a living from music.”