POP MUSIC : Natalie Merchant’s 10,000-to-1 Shot

Natalie Merchant is so eager to begin a new chapter in her musical life that you could sense during an interview that she was counting the hours before she would enter what she jokingly calls her winter hibernation.

In New York after three weeks in Europe to promote the 10,000 Maniacs’ new “Unplugged” album, Merchant--a symbol of intelligence and integrity in rock for nearly a decade--had only an MTV promotional visit left this day before she could seal herself off from the pop world.

“The winter is a great time to be sequestered, which is what I do when I write,” she says. “I need to be by myself, isolated. . . . That’s always been the way I’ve done my best work.”

Unlike previous retreats that resulted in the songs that made 10,000 Maniacs one of the most original and affecting rock groups of the ‘80s, this winter’s material will be the basis of Merchant’s first solo album.

The “Unplugged” collection is the farewell album from 10,000 Maniacs, which also included bassist Steven Gustafson, drummer Jerome Augustyniak, guitarist Rob Buck and keyboardist Dennis Drew. The album, which is in the national Top 20, showcases the group’s graceful, folk-accented sound and socially conscious lyrics. (See review, Page 70).

Despite the acclaim over the years, Merchant felt creatively restless by the time of the Maniacs’ 1989 album “Blind Man’s Zoo” and took a year off from touring at the time to regain her creative focus.

While the band did get back together, she continued to long for the freedom of a solo career. She told the band privately in 1991 of the break that was formally announced this fall. During an interview, Merchant, 30, reflected on the reasons she wanted her creative freedom, and the influences--musical and social--that shaped her artistic vision.

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Question: How do you feel about the breakup? Is this a liberating time for you or a melancholy one?

Answer: I don’t feel melancholic at all--no regrets. In fact, I feel extremely optimistic . . . excited about writing songs with other people, collaborating with other instrumentalists, trying new things. I felt I was expending too much effort in trying to participate by committee when I really wanted to be a little tyrant and have my own way (laughs).

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Q: If you decided to leave in 1991, why did you stay in the group for two more years?

A: The band was like an extended family, and we had been together over 10 years by the time I made the decision in 1991. Three of the members had wives, two of them with children. I felt I had an obligation to make my plans clear and give everyone plenty of time to adjust. It wouldn’t be fair just to walk out.

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Q: Did it boil down to a question of loyalty to them versus being true to your own artistic vision?

A: There obviously was a chemistry between us that created the 10,000 Maniacs’ sound, but I wasn’t totally enamored by that sound all the time. I was always gravitating toward inviting other instrumentalists to play with us . . . toward trying other arrangements. I think we made very good records, but I think we could have been a lot more adventurous at times. The way we worked was by consensus voting, and sometimes one vote was enough to block us from trying something.

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Q: What was the first music or record that meant anything to you?

A: My mother listened to the Beatles records, so I’d have to say “Revolver.” I must have been around 4 or 5 when that came out, but even at that age I remember how magical it sounded--the way the voices harmonized.

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Q: What about when you got older?

A: Brian Eno’s “Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy).” I bought an eight-track in a discount bin at K mart because I liked the cover. I didn’t know who he was, but the lyrics were so thought-provoking and he was creating sounds I had never heard before--almost like sound landscapes.

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Q: What about Dylan? His work seems to have been an influence, given your poetic style and the social observation.

A: I heard the singles on the radio, but I didn’t hear a Dylan album until I was 19. I had a boyfriend who played me the “Times They Are A-Changin’ ” album.

At the time, I was listening to a lot of British folk music and then American folk music. I sort of heard everything in the order that Dylan did. . . . The most primary sources, then Woody Guthrie, then Dylan.

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Q: Did you find elements that were common to all those artists?

A: Storytelling. Those folk songs had a beginning and an end, and they instructed you about yourself, your condition as a female or an American.

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Q: What appealed to you first, singing or writing?

A: I didn’t expect to be either. My goal was to draw. I was planning to go to art school, but I met the guys in the band at a party and they heard me sing and invited me to rehearsals. But even after two or three years in the band, my plan was still to go back to college. I thought the band was a cheap way to travel around the country, but it never seemed like it would have any real future.

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Q: Do you mean it didn’t offer a future in the sense of financial security or artistic fulfillment?

A: It felt fulfilling, but I came from a pretty poor household and I didn’t want to live without any kind of security. My mother had raised the four of us by herself and worked minimum-wage jobs, and I didn’t ever want to be without essential, practical things. Even at that early age, I was frightened about not having health insurance.

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Q: Do you think that watching your mother raise the family did a lot to shape some of your social views?

A: It definitely made me a feminist because my immediate role model was a single working mother. When my mother and father divorced, it was still so uncommon in our town that the teachers took me aside after school to ask me how things were at home. But folk music was also political. Take our song “Eat for Two,” for instance. It is based on a song type that is hundreds of years old. I can cite so many examples of folk songs written about women pregnant with illegitimate children and the different ways they came to terms with it.

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Q: Like R.E.M., the Maniacs always seemed fiercely protective of their integrity. Was there anything you did that you felt was a commercial compromise?

A: I’d say the biggest compromise we ever made, and I’m embarrassed even to say it, was when we recorded (Cat Stevens’) “Peace Train” (in 1987). That was the only time we were pressured to do something that we didn’t want to do. We were young and we had made one record for Elektra, which was (1986’s) “The Wishing Chair.” It was very expensive and it only sold about 60,000 copies. Some labels would have dropped us, but Elektra stuck with us.

When we recorded the next album, we thought we had really great songs, but they didn’t think there was a song on the record that radio would play. So they got us to do a cover of “Peace Train,” which they released as a single. I was glad when it flopped. I didn’t agree with the lyrics. I’m not as optimistic as that song. Besides, I had my own war protest song in “Gun Shy.”

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Q: What about the version of Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen’s “Because the Night” on the “Unplugged” album?

A: I think that’s totally different because that was a decision of ours. We like the song. I also like the fact that Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen are such different artists: Patti the punk poetess and Bruce the guitar-playing, working-class hero.

The two of them collaborating on the song seemed to me to be symbolic of what 10,000 Maniacs had managed to do. We had somehow retained our alternative label--our subversive vision, if you will, yet we were accepted in the mainstream.

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Q: How do you feel about America today? Do you think the country is moving closer to the compassion and humanity that are under-scored in many of your songs?

A: What I find most discouraging is the social Darwinist attitude--the feeling that the fittest will survive and that people deserve their poverty because they don’t work hard enough. It astounds me that we can be so wealthy yet have such disregard for so many of our people.

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Q: How important is it for you to interact with other artists? There has been a lot written about your friendship with R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe.

A: For a long time, I was very much a hermit. I could spend weeks and weeks alone without any contact and be content. But I have emerged from that in the last five years, and I am beginning to really desire company of other people--a diversity of people. It is becoming more and more important to me.

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Q: Something else you share with Stipe is a strict separation between your personal life and your professional life. Why is that so important to you?

A: There is definitely a guarded side of me. I would find it soul-destroying to reveal too much of my personal life. People do that all the time on “Oprah” and “Geraldo,” and I don’t think it’s healthy. You should have a private self, which is why I try to keep the focus in interviews on my work. You put enough of yourself into your music.

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Q: What’s the most rewarding thing about the way your music has been received?

A: The way people from so many different areas of life have responded to the songs. There have been requests for permission to quote lyrics in law journals as well as literacy training guides and domestic violence pamphlets.

Mainly, I guess what I feel is fortunate to have the chance to be a witness to my times and to write about this country as I see it--from the perspective of a woman.