A smiling Hazel O Connor has a cold, or something bronchial as her usually raspy voice takes on another husky dimension. The female icon has been coming to Rewind (and Henley) for a few years now and she is always welcomed with open arms. Her seminal and best-loved album (and film) ‘Breaking Glass’ is celebrating it’s big 4-0 in 2020 and Hazel will back on the road with Toyah in co-headlining tour dubbed ‘The Electric Ladies Of The Eighties Tour.’ But now as the sun sets on another Rewind Festival and fresh from her twenty-ish minute early evening slot and with a veggie pizza on route Originalrock.net caught up with Hazel O Connor for a quick but enjoyable interview.
Originalrock.net. Welcome back to Henley and Rewind, how do you find these type of festivals?
Hazel O Connor. “I love them, I really love them.”
OR. Short but sweet.
HOC. “Well I’d love to do a longer set but I have worked up to five songs. I mean I’d love to do a half-hour or forty-minute set that’d be bliss.”
OR. We have to talk about Breaking Glass…
HOC “If you want, I don’t care, we can talk about many things.”
OR. I listened to it for the first time in a little while last week, I mean it’s still a really powerful album.
HOC. “That’s why it’s great when you get a good producer. The songs are still bang on, isn’t that mad.”
OR. Is that down to fantastic songwriting or our (societies) head in the sand attitude to politics and life?
HOC.”Well I don’t know, do you know what freaks me out…Many of those when I listen to them (pausing) I was really accused of being kind of a fraud, I can remember being accused of being a fraud. I thought but I really felt those things and maybe it’s just that I thought of things a bit early. I don’t know, maybe I just had a moment in my life where inspiration was just pouring in it was just the right thing to write. But I’m really proud I wrote them, really proud I wrote ‘Eighth Day’.”
OR. we could talk about your life and your experiences for hours but time is limited so how do feel about Breaking Glass being forty and people still want to hear it, see it and come and see you.
HOC. “It’s just great. We were just discussing this actually because when we do our ‘Breaking Glass’ tour next year we’re doing it with a band called the Subterraneans. So myself and the two girls I always work with Sarah Fisher and Clare Hirst, we will incorporate some of the things we do into the Breaking Glass set. We were going to do it the other way round where me and the girls do a little support slot for the whole gig because we love what we do so much but I get too tired. Because I tend to be the one who gets the lights man sorted and other things sorted and by the time I’ve done everything it’s like five minutes before I go on, just time to stick a bit of make-up on and get on-stage, I’m just knackered. So I think I’ll ask the Subs if they want to come on and do twenty minutes of their material, so I’ll have time to have a cup of tea and put my makeup on. I do something that the wider public wouldn’t know now but when they do come for ‘Breaking Glass’ they fall in love with those other songs as well. I’ve got classics in my new material.”
OR. So Breaking Glass gives you the opportunity to introduce people to what you’ve been doing for the last…
HOC. (cutting in) “Ten years!, Exactly it opens a lot of other doors.”
OR. Including your cover of ‘Chasing Cars’.
HOC. “Yep, it’s become a bit of a classic now, our version of it, which is hilarious, I mean I wish I got the money from it, imagine that, but what a song. A lot of people like our version because it’s such a different take on it. “
OR. It’s quite stripped back.
HOC. “It could only work like that otherwise you’d be doing pastiche. It was actually The Subterraneans who were playing it their set and it reminded me… I’d been in the hospital with my mum who was dying of cancer and when I thought about the song and the words it really hit me. I know the words are about love (recites some lyrics) but for me it was about being by the hospital bed thinking “I just want to stay with you mum, stay.” I just thought how wonderful if you could make a very alone and quiet version of that song so the words are just the most important thing in it. I went to Sarah and I said just play it like this just really simple and lets see if we can do something with our voices, and she’s was “oh no, I’m not sure” because she’s like that, she gets worried because sometimes I have strange ideas that might work or not work. But I have to try them I don’t like to have an idea and not try it at least. Then when we did it, it worked really well and people were going “oh I really loved your version” so we can’t not do it now. So when we do these gigs next year with the Subs we can just do it as the first encore so the band can stay away for a minute and come on after.”
OR. You played in Blackpool (Pier) earlier in the month at the same time that The Rebellion Music Festival any reason why you didn’t play the Festival.
HOC. “Well they didn’t ask me and the Pier people did and because I was doing Rewind I did the Pier gig to pay for me coming over from Ireland. The ferry is really expensive this time of year and I drive everywhere so that was the idea behind that.”
OR. I only mentioned Rebellion because Toyah played there a couple of years ago and got a huge crowd and if you took Breaking Glass there, it’d be amazing.
HOC. “I couldn’t do Rebellion and do the Pier and the Pier people asked first and they offered me something I couldn’t refuse and I thought that’ll pay for the ferry! (laughing)”
OR. As a Coventry girl and someone who has a life-size cut out in the Coventry Music Museum, how do you think it being named as the city of culture 2021 will help Coventry.
HOC. “I was talking about this with Pauline (Black) earlier. I hope it will help it loads, I don’t know I just hope so. I just love people like Pete Chambers who’s worked his arse off forever to bring Coventry music into the frontline as such.”
OR. And not just 2-Tone…
HOC. “No and that’s what so great about it, he’s just so passionate and all the people around the 2-Tone village are also passionate and that’s something that’s really important, passion in whatever you do. And that’s why I hate what’s going on in AMERICA! And here (the UK) there’s no passion it’s just about money.”
Breaking Glass remains a post-punk classic and in 1980 it was lyrically way ahead of its time. ‘Blackman’, ‘Eighth Day’ and ’Give Me An Inch’ all still resonate politically some forty years later. ‘Will You’ is one of the greatest ballads of all time, an honest, open and a fidgetingly flustered late-night miss of romantic possibilities. The ongoing Hazel O Connor story may always be intrinsically linked to her character Kate in Breaking Glass but her recent solo material also hits the spot and her autobiography is definitely worth a read.
For more Hazel info including tour dates (solo and with Toyah), music and merch head over to https://www.hazeloconnor.com/
For more information about The Coventry Music Museum http://www.covmm.co.uk/2016/