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Precious, moi?
She may not quite be the humourless, tree-hugging, hippy of reputation, but Alaskan singer Jewel is pop's
answer to Mother Teresa. By Jonathan Trew
"Actually, I live on crack. It brings me closer to God than anything I've ever done." She's lying, of course. Multi-million selling, Alaskan singer Jewel Kilcher doesn't do crack. Nor does she do cynicism. She's partial to the odd toke of sarcasm, but her psychic drug of choice is a potent, speedball mixture of sincerity and philanthropy.
Very popular it is too. Her first album, the folky, acoustic Pieces Of You, has sold over 10 million units of sincerity. Her second album, Spirit, a 13-track bonanza of emotional exploration and musings on personal development, looks likely to do the same. Her book of teen angst poetry, A Night Without Armour, has been reprinted over 15 times and has been on The New York Times best-seller list for nearly a year. The first fruits of her nascent acting
career can be seen later this year with the release of Ang (Sense And Sensibility) Lee's Civil War drama, Ride With The Devil.
Now for the philanthropy. Using a substantial amount of her royalties, Jewel has set up an organisation called Higher Ground For Humanity, a non-profit foundation with a mission to 'support, inspire and empower new possibilities for humankind'. Among the organisations which HGH supports are an alternative health and healing clinic in New Delhi; the Friends of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, a group founded to explore human consciousness; and Families Helping Families, a programme providing support and education for families whose children have died.
Jewel Kilcher is 24 and, at first glance, can appear like a pop psychology version of Mother Teresa: not a bad word to say about anybody and bursting at the seams with a surfeit of benevolence. Too good to be true, in fact. Which is where her wise-crack about cocaine comes in. "I do often come across in the press as a daisy-eating, morally-opposed-to-anything-bad kind of person," she hoots, with a vigour rarely heard in her songs. "I was so afraid I was getting pig-tails and Pollyanna costumes."
Sitting legs crossed on a well upholstered sofa in London's Dorchester Hotel, there are no signs of pig-tails or Pollyanna costumes on Jewel. Dressed in baggy tracksuit pants and a T-shirt, the woman who has emotionally connected with countless teenagers by laying bare her own crises looks slightly rumpled and little like the groomed and poised image of her publicity photos. The luminous beauty and strong features which she says she inherited from her Swiss grandmother are still evident, just slightly obscured by an early start and the grind of the promotional tour which has seen her spend the last three days clocking up air miles.
While prone to the earnest, self-conscious analysis that many inhabitants of California love and which induces red-faced cringing in uptight natives of these isles, Jewel is also witty, self-deprecating and articulate. Whenever she feels she is being asked to take herself too seriously, she cracks a joke. Ask what she thinks it is that people see in her and, with a
completely poker face, she'll deadpan: "My teeth".
When she feels that she's been verbally beating her chest a tad too much, she switches her accent to impersonate different stereotypes. Over the course of an hour, I'm audience to Jewel as Burpin' Jock Redneck, Joe Liberal and Jasmine, the bubble-headed Valley Doll and Prozac fiend. The only Jewel not on display is the one of public perception: Jewel the tree-hugging, humourless hippy chick. Hell, in real life, she isn't even vegetarian and explodes another myth
by explaining that she's allergic to vegetables.
Chugging on a mixture of celery, carrot and cucumber juice, she wrinkles her nose after each mouthful, closes her eyes, swallows and pronounces it "disgusting". She follows each juice shooter with a tea chaser.
"I have very ill kidneys," she confides. "They've got better over the last couple of years but I still have to do things because they don't always operate correctly on their own. Celery flushes out the kidneys...unfortunately for me, tea's very bad for them but I'm striking a compromise."
Jewel's recurring kidney troubles are a legacy of her not-so-distant living environment. It's often hard to appreciate the charitable concerns of multi-million selling stars when the worst hardship that they have had to endure for a number of years is the odd bottle of Bolly that's not been chilled properly. Jewel, on the other hand, has been on the sharp, hungry end of poverty.
Brought up initially in a log cabin in Alaska as part of a family which included inventors, artists, singers and actors, Jewel's childhood was one of itinerant performance, hard work and harsh conditions, if not actual hardship. That came a little later.
As a child she would sing at bars with her family. If they weren't rich financially, they were creatively comfortable. Writing her songs, poems and prose still plays an important part in Jewel's make-up and even well-being. "Writing for me is just like another limb, it helps me walk and talk through my day," she explains. "It definitely does help me. I don't know if cathartic is the right word... It's just that when I write things down, I learn things. Things that I didn't think I knew, sometimes."
She has had to learn and adjust to many things. Her parents divorced when she was eight and Jewel has calculated that from then until she was 16, she lived in 15 houses. "From 16 to 20, I lived in 12 different houses. Then from 20 to 24, I've lived in every hotel across the world."
What she omits to say is that at the age of 16, she struck out on her own for San Diego, living out of a van on a parking lot. Freed from the necessity to raise rent each month, she hoped to concentrate on her fledgling coffee house singing circuit. The major label Atlantic eventually took notice and give her a contract, but not before Jewel had experienced the grind of poverty. On welfare and too broke to afford medicine for her ailing health, Jewel lived the grim life that others sing about but don't know. Millions of album sales later, aspects of her previous existence still remain.
"Some things stay oddly the same," she says, evenly. I'm still somewhat isolated. I still live in a car or rather a tour bus. I've never had time off the road, really. In other ways, it's completely different. I'll never have to worry about how I'll eat again."
As far as Jewel is concerned now, the van story is history; not to be denied but not to be dwelt upon either. She is stoical about her reversal of fortunes. Having seen both the low life and the high life, she refuses to be cynical. Not that she is a wide-eyed innocent. Through the music industry she has met "some of the seediest people ever", yet, in her music, she insists on avoiding all pretence.
"I speak very sincerely because in my own life I've always felt that cynicism is a luxury," she considers carefully. "When you really deal with poverty, when you're not just looking at people who are poor but when you and your friends are living off food stamps, I think those friends of mine are the most intensely faithful people I've ever been around. You have to believe in something when you are poor, even if it's just yourself. "Sure, I believe in being sarcastic and
facetious humour but, ultimately, my goal is different. I want to connect with people. I want to help kids that are in the position that I was in, people who are lonely and frightened."
Jewel stops herself, dips her head and comes back up grinning. "When I watch myself on television I think 'What the f**k am I doing?'" she says with a smile. "I'm like the dorky kid. I'm not cool. I don't think enough about what I wear. Probably. I don't think enough about what I say. Probably. I'm not that careful."
She is right. Real benevolence wins no brownie points in the cool, rock star club, which is what makes Jewel all the more refreshing.
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