Portrait by PAUL NATKIN
Laurie Anderson: I moved to New York and studied art history, but they didn’t let us make art, so I got a studio downtown and met people on the borders of art. [In 1974] I’d hitched to the North Pole – I almost got there – and when I got back, all my stuff had been stolen, my violin chopped up, drug addicts on every floor of my loft. But in the mail was an invite to ZBS [Zero Bullshit Studios], this sound commune. I started to make sort-of songs there, with violin, and I met [sound designer] Bob Bielecki. Bob also introduced me to meditation. Because of meditation, I started making loops, and then my stories would go over those loops.
I wanted sounds that were real too, like birds.