— David Hepworth
"It's funny the pressures people feel," Joan Armatrading told Mike Stand, "Black guys come to my gigs and tell me they like my stuff, and maybe Joni Mitchell, but they have to hide my records when their friends come round."
It's hard to imagine more than forty years on anyone being ashamed of owning a Joan Armatrading album. Of course, this is a different time. People no longer have giant stereos and record/tape/CD collections on display in their living rooms. No one goes round to their friends' places and immediately begins thumbing through their music. No one has guilty pleasures anymore and it isn't even considered odd that sixty-year-olds might be into K-Pop. Being into someone like Joan Armatrading is now considered to be cool, just as she always should have been.
Joan Armatrading has carved out a career of almost half a century just doing her thing without much thought to the concerns of others. She has long had the image of a generous, warm performer but behind this lies a woman who is as strong willed as anyone in the business. In the same Hits interview quoted above, she finds herself dismissing most of Stand's suggestions (Why don't you go solo? Why don't you get an all black band? Why don't you form a real street band? Why don't you form a permanent group? I'm assuming issues of space forced him to cut further queries like Why don't you go synth-pop? or Why don't you help spear a barber shop revival?) and concludes that she has to be the one in charge of what's going on. To think: an ego on such a humble woman. "Me Myself I" may not have been quite the joke people took it to be.
America tried to change her. Up until then, the bulk of her output had been recorded in London. Most of it is great but all of it is distinctly her own sound: elegant folk-pop anchoring her deep, expressive voice. Looking to shake things up, she went to New York to work with an admirable selection of sessioners and producer Richard Gottehrer, who would also be at helm of recordings by Dr. Feelgood, The Go-Go's and Richard Hell. I won't fault anyone for trying something new but the results are mixed. David Hepworth also reviewed Armatrading's album Me Myself I in Smash Hits and found the arrangements to be "heavy handed", which detracts from the "easy intimacy of her delivery and touching honesty of the songs". This isn't a problem on "All the Way from America", where the hired hands service the song beautifully. Elsewhere, however, her desire to call the shots seems to have vanished into the hazy Manhattan skyline.
With "All the Way from America" you get the pain of a long-distance relationship, with the one that has been left behind feeling that there's much more than physical distance keeping this couple apart. Given that it was recorded in the US, it is natural to conclude that Armatrading is the one getting on with her life while her lover dejectedly waits back in the UK. Did Joan sense that America called to her the same way it did Charlie Chaplin, John Lennon and generations of British entertainers? It's just as well she has always been so single-minded that she never let that happen.
"All the Way from America" came up short of the Top 40 but the Me Myself I album became the biggest of her career. It didn't make her into a superstar but that's just as well since the quality of her output could have suffered had her popularity grown to superstar levels. Feet firmly placed on the ground, Joan Armatrading would never have to answer to anyone and we're all the better for it.
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Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Jackson Browne: "Boulevard"
The "dear old wimp" tries to go rock and it doesn't quite work on this attempt. Reading Hepworth's review, you'd think the singer-songwriter had done nothing but heartbroken laments like "Late for the Sky" and "Fountain of Sorrow" over the past decade but he could go uptempo when called upon. The quicker pace doesn't let "Boulevard" down, instead it's his pursuit of sleazy subject matter that is what's wrong. Browne is at his best when he's reflecting on his own experiences and not observing how other people go about living their lives. Still, North Americans were impressed enough to give him a hit with this nonsense even though it would soon be forgotten about once the masterful sunshine pop of "Somebody's Baby" came out from the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Jackson Browne clearly went right back to expressing his own feelings — either that or he simply got high schoolers better than sex traffickers (and there's no faulting him there).
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