INSTANT KARMA
Global superstardom? It’s exhausting!
AN AUDIENCE WITH TRACEY THORN
The Everything But The Girl star turned rock memoirist on lightbulb moments, “fuck-off hits” and being Aretha for a day
Interview by TOM PINNOCK
“When histories of musical or pop-culture movements get told, the women just vanish”
TRACEY Thorn is well aware of the absurdity of the situation that she and her Everything But The Girl partner Ben Watt found themselves in after “Missing” scaled charts around the world in the mid-’90s. “I remember thinking, ‘This is brilliant, I’ve loved it, but I couldn’t live like this forever.’ We’d already been along a road with some real ups and downs, so it was almost like someone waving a magic wand and saying, ‘After all that, you’re gonna have the fun of an absolutely massive fuck-off hit!’Then we did the follow-up record, which was successful again, then I retired. Global superstardom? It’s exhausting!”
Her retirement has been unusually productive: as well as three solo albums and a Christmas record, Thorn has also written four non-fiction books, with the latest, My Rock’n’Roll Friend, charting her long friendship with Go-Betweens drummer Lindy Morrison with typical humour and emotional depth. “A few people had said to Lindy, ‘You should write a book,’ and she went, ‘I don’t want to do that.’ I said quite jokingly to her, ‘I’ll write a book about you.’ Then I thought, ‘Hang on, that could be really interesting…’”
On a grey spring day, Thorn is on a video call with Uncut to answer your questions on the book, her newfound interest in gardening, her work with Paul Weller, what’s next for her music and more.