When I get drunk, I get drunk, there’s no doubt about it. Vodka by the bottle. That’s the kind of culture I come from. We don’t sip drink, we fucking drink it. You go all the way, otherwise you’re a wimp. It has a lot to do with the weather. You’re always either very sober or very drunk. There’s no room for the in-between stuff.
I used to love drinking during the blizzards in Iceland. You’d dress really well and run between bars getting really pissed on slammers. Slammers are the best drink when there’s blizzards. Then, we’d go out and roll in the snow. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss all that.
The whole alternative thing, I think, has gotten a bit stuck. But there are bands out there that I like very much now. Like the Breeders girls, they are so great - their attitude is so fresh and so modern. And I really admire Courtney Love as well. And with Madonna, I’m not going to go into the things she’s done for women. You’d fall asleep, there are so many.
I used to be in a punk band that was so hardcore that if someone came to us and asked for an autograph, we’d just tell them to fuck off and get a life.
I suggest sending that message out to her fan club.
"Get a life !" She laughs.
Then again, there are strange things which make people happy. Like I get really happy and sentimental if my kid writes something to me, or I like the colour fluffy white. We all got our little soft spots ; why can’t you brush your teeth with your socks on, things like that.
Question : What’s your favorite venue and country to perform at ?
Björk : Hmmm... it’s really hard to pick ! It really depends on the show. I’ve done marvelous shows in great places, and then later done not-so-great shows in the same place. There are some gorgeous places around the world, both outside and inside. There’s one place that’s in a cave in the Canary Islands that I hope to play one day.
The first time I went to London, I’d walk for three or four hours and couldn’t find a way out of the city. Only now have I begun to enjoy the strain of a city. Cities are bad for you, and I kind of like that. It compresses you and can be very stimulating.
En portant un masque, je me sens plus protégée. Je sens que je peux être davantage moi-même et j’accepte le fait qu’une partie de mon travail est d’être publique.
Different things suit different people. I personally can’t deal with hash. I’m claustrophobic and I’m obsessed with oxygen. I can’t deal with smoke or pollution of any kind. I’m not very big into drugs. I like my drinking too much.
I don’t get it. Why don’t people get into it ? I was born in 1965, and if you were born around that time and listening to all these noises in your life, you get into electronic music because there’s the most freedom there and it’s the most experimental. It’s nourishing, it’s where the risks are being taken, it’s happy, it’s life, it’s fucking living. I just think it’s gorgeous.
Luckily I’m so stupid that I don’t realise why. The only way I can explain it is that I was in the right place at the right time, I’ve been wearing these types of clothes since I was 14, it’s just that someone has now decided they are in fashion. It’s a nice compliment...
It turns out that the Bjork clones she inspired - those British girls with their hair so randomly bunched and braided that in comparison Princess Leia looked as if she was having a good hair day - alarmed her more than they flattered her.
I always felt strongly about authority. I don’t like to be told what to do and I don’t like telling other people what to do. I think we work fine without bossing people about.
And fashion is a kind of bossing ?
For sure. If you don’t wear these labels and spend that amount of money you are committing the worst crime possible, which is to be distasteful. If you are not fashionable you are criminal. That is outrageous. It is like slavery.
What, then, about that extraordinary, fashion-victim costume she wore for the Oscars : half-dress, half-swan ?
But, if anything, that was meant to say people should wear whatever they want to wear.
I’ve never listened to guitar tock, really. To me, it was just an accident that we happened to have a guitarist in the Sugarcubes ; our style wasn’t planned. What’s always turned me on - since I was little - is jazzy and funky and soulful things, as opposed to rock & roll things. Igor Stravinsky is a big blast from the past that I like ; also Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry - those things were free, experimental, avant-garde.
I could never stand guitar rock.
That’s the funny thing.
My father was a hippy who just listened to Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton and I grew up listening to that music. When I was seven, I was convinced tahth this music was ancient history, that I would do something new.
I think that as soon as any form becomes traditional, like the guitar, bass and drums, then people start to behave traditionally. It’s really difficult to get a band to stay on the edge using typical bass, guitar and drums set-up because it tends to lapse into a predictable form.
My ideal band would be an open-minded group that won’t let anything get in the way of creating something new. They could use saxophones, teaspoons, drum machines or anything to communicate a whole whole concept whether it be a house track, experminatal music, pop, or just a nursery rhyme.
Yeah, I guess so. I like things when they’re a bit alive. And if you don’t have a friend or a pet or you’re away traveling, then it is nice to have cuddly things to wear.
It’s just one of these things where I’m not sure exactly, but probably everybody can see it but me. I just know it was right and a powerful decision. Maybe I’ll go back in a few years and go, ’Of course, it’s obvious, silly.’ But it seemed to sum up a lot of things for me.
I recently went to see Christo’s wrapping in Berlin. Have you seen any of his work ? Do you like his work ?
I can’t stand it. A lot of these people, like Andy Warhol and these pop people, get one idea and do it 900 times ; I can’t stand these Philip Glass idiots.
I liked paper a lot and different cardboards and I would tear them to pieces and whatever came out would be pictures and I would make little worlds.
And once, says Björk, she spent a whole day making one of these paper worlds, a huge, special paper world.
I’d fallen in love with this girl in school, I was six, and I took it to her. And I’d never talked to her before. She kind ot rolled it apart and it was just a lot ot torn pieces of paper with nothing written on them. I just suddeniy realised it wasn’t that brilliant, just rubbish really. She just laughed really hard and threw it in the dustbin. Björk laughs. It’s a sad story.
I don’t watch many Hollywood films, and being from Iceland, it’s pretty accidental what gets over there. Most Hollywood films that I watch are Busby Berkeley musicals and … what’s that movie called with all the swimming ? Esther Williams, that sort of thing, so I thought it’d be very appropriate to wear a swan. I guess they don’t do those things anymore, right ? But it was a tribute to Busby Berkeley and that sort of elegance.
Her latest musical passion is jungle. She tells me she adopts an anthropological approach and sneaks along to raves in "David Attenborough mode". Her face lights up as she describes her attraction.
It’s positive. It’s about fierce, fierce, fierce joy. That sort of [she pants like a dog, imagining dance exhaustion] I’m just too happy, I want to explode. Aaarrgghh ! That’s jungle. It’s like when you meet a person who you know is going to be your friend for ten years. And the energy that’s there, it’s like aargghh !
It’s amazing that you can sit in a car and be really depressed and horrible in a taxi or something, and then just the right song comes on the radio. And it just fucking sorts you out. I just find that... that’s a miracle.
I’ve always been a big fan of the World Saxophone Quartet. Two-and-a-half years ago in Iceland, I recorded some brass songs with three saxophones and a voice with Icelandic brass players. I sensed they needed something ; musically, they were right and it was the form I wanted them to be, but they needed arrangement. I sent Oliver the score and tape, and he kind of rewrote the bits for saxophone and made it come alive. He put attitude in it that I was incapable of.
I’m not so into jazz at all. I am and I’m not.
There’s nothing I hate more than saxophones. Eighty per cent of it I can’t stand, like rock ’n’ roll sax, but Oliver’s attitude is very modern. It’s fresh. Saxophones tend to romanticise a lot, I like them being quite pranksterish, sounding rude. I don’t like it when it’s red-wine bar and dinner music. The stuff Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry did together is my favourite. It doesn’t take anything for granted and has a sense of humour which is so imponant. So many people forget about humour.
I feel odd asking you this, but what makes a man sexy ? I’m a bit off the map when it comes to sexiness.
[Giggles] I can find men sexy, women sexy, plants sexy, the ocean, fish. If we’re talking something physical, the back of necks. Necks on people and animals.
You must really like giraffes.
[Laughs] It’s not about length !
Well, at least when it comes to necks. So, what lady would you switch for ?
Too many. That’sa bit slippery. If you want a specific, I’d have to pick an animal. [Pauses] A panda. I’d switch for a sexy panda.
Freedom is the biggest aphrodisiac. The good things in life is having a bottle of red wine and a friend of yours all sleeping in the grass or jumping in the ocean.
I’ve always been a bit soft on scientists and men who can work miracles with their brains. And, oh yeah, my grandmother. She’s sixty-eight and she goes camping and paints and just lives life large. I want to be like her. I’m in a situation now that I’ll probably never be in again, I can go into a studio and I don’t have to worry about the bill. I bought myself a computer the other day that I can draw pictures on to siut the music. I don’t have to fight so hard for things now but I might again. And, when I do I pray that I’ll be as self-sufficient as my grandmother.