Jewel: raised by wolves in igloos. Maybe
'People were trying to consume me without even knowing what I tasted
like,' says singer Jewel Kilcher of the first flush of her stardom, 'and
that made me feel funny.' Glacier mint? Chocolate sundae? Peach? Many
hours have been wasted by people attempting to pin down her precise
flavour. Now she's about to break into movies - in A Ride With The
Devil, helmed by Ice Storm director Ang Lee, no less - a
manoeuvre which ought to help readjust the off-kilter accounts of her
existence which followed the multimillion-selling success of her first
record, Pieces Of You.
Jewel wrote and recorded that album in her teens, then told the world
about her ancestry (Swiss), her childhood (in an enclosed Alaskan
Mormon community), her hard times (she slept in a van while trying to
make it) and her sizable celebrity (she dated Sean Penn, who described
her as the most important songwriter since Bob Dylan). 'It was
mind-boggling,' she says now of her portrayal. 'I'm not a freak to me.
I was raised where I was raised and I took it that people liked me, I
swear, but to the States I looked like some freaky thing raised by
wolves. In igloos.'
Now, she's got a new album - Spirit, where her country-folk
hybrid is bulked by Madonna producer Patrick Leonard and her voice soars
and swirls like Joni Mitchell's did - another tour, and of
course that movie, which opens in the US in June.
'I toured for four years, then did it again, and I was so burned out I
just needed a change,' she says of her decision to do A Ride With
The Devil. 'It was a complete change of pace and a huge challenge -
horrifying, and very gratifying.' But she's never been easily scared.
'For some things,' she says, 'I'm pretty fearless. I used to get really
sick all the time, but I could go on stage in front of 30,000 people,
before the Ramones, and go, "Fuck you, listen".'
PETER LYLE
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